Obit 31
by Mackiecam
Summary: Someone is stealing cremated ashes from the crematorium. Grandma is incensed. Morelli is on the case, but he needs Stephanie's help. This is a total babe and is a continuation from Toxic 30. It will be posted at a minimum of three times per week.
1. Chapter 1

_The following story is a work of fiction_ _that features characters developed by Janet Evanovich. No money has been earned through writing this story. Any similarities to real events or persons are entirely coincidental. _

_Although a stand-alone, this book builds upon the previous books in my series. The first one is a bit cupcake-y, but the rest are pure babes and develop the relationships between the characters. For maximum enjoyment, I suggest that you read them in the following order:_

_22 Caliber_

_Trigger Happy 23 _

_Morelli's Argument 23.5_

_Ranger 23.75_

_Threatening 24_

_Fixation 25_

_Security 26_

_Sneaky 27_

_Date Night at the Movies 27.1_

_Meeting Maria 27.2_

_The Intervention 27.3_

_Envious 28_

_Dickie's Demise 28.1_

_Mob Matters 28.2_

_Altercation at Giovichinni's 28.3_

_Numbskull 29_

_Toxic 30_

_In recognition of the fact that I'm a binge reader and don't personally like to wait for updates, I will try to post at a minimum at nights on a Sunday-Tuesday-Thursday schedule (although it could be on a Monday-Wednesday-Friday schedule, depending upon where you live in the world), barring unseen life events. However, in the past I have periodically posted extra chapters to celebrate achieving some personal milestone – or just because I like the way the sun is shining that day – so you might want to watch for those. Since I do that relatively frequently, if you are enjoying the story you might want to follow it rather than continually check back._

_Reviews, as always, are greatly appreciated. I have a few people who regularly review for me, and I'd like to thank you for that. Your reviews have given me the confidence to write another story. As a thank you for leaving reviews, for every 25 reviews I generally post an extra chapter on top of my three times per week schedule. I appreciate all reviews and try to respond to each and every one. Please note that I cannot respond to reviews that have been posted by guests. _

_Thank you for reading my story. I hope you enjoy it!_

_~ Sarah ~_

**Chapter One**

I stared at the peppermint tea and dry scone in loathing, and was thankful that the morning sickness seemed to disappear by the time that midmorning came. I was Stephanie Plum, a mutt with a Hungarian and Italian and American heritage. I had shoulder-length brown curly hair and blue eyes, a cute little nose, and was unremarkable in every way…and I was eight and a half weeks pregnant.

The father was Ricardo Carlos Manoso, aka Ranger. He was, as my grandmother said, a tall sip of iced tea on a hot day. He was six inches taller than my 5'7" frame, was Cuban-American in descent, had dark hair and eyes and tanned skin, and had muscles everywhere. I know. I've looked. He was a tough street youth who had developed into a suave security specialist. Named Ranger after his position in the US Rangers, he had left the army a few years ago and started a security company that provided all manner of security services, from staffing trained security guards to designing, implementing and monitoring security systems, to developing firewalls and other cybersecurity measures, to bodyguarding, to skip tracing. There were two offices: the head office here in Trenton, and a satellite office in Miami. In the past, his head office had worked with the Secret Service, the FBI, the CIA, state police and the local Trenton Police Department. I would assume the same was true of his satellite office. His company had grown from just himself and his best friend to a team of now over one hundred and fifty people in just Trenton alone, and it was a growth that didn't appear to be abating.

I should know. I worked part-time for Ranger as a researcher, and it was my responsibility to research all the potential companies that we were pitching our services to, in addition to investigating all our clients' employees to search for security risks. I did that by using an incredibly invasive search engine that we had designed ourselves. In-Spect did good things for us. It was the cornerstone to our service and could find out anything from the date you took your first step to the results of your last gynecological exam. I found that out the hard way. I had put my name through the search engine once for a lark and was shocked at the information that came up. I had learned things about myself that even I didn't know.

So I worked part-time doing research for Ranger. The other half of the time, I worked as a bounty hunter for Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, a company that was started by my cousin. He was a perverted creep who was a surprisingly good bondsman, and a few years ago he let me blackmail my way into the role as a bounty hunter. I had been desperate for a job. Vinnie had been desperate for a bounty hunter and, although he didn't think that I was suited for the job, his desperation and my juicy bit of gossip that I held over his head made him give me a few files to see what I could do. I'm not sure who was more surprised when I captured them. So he gave me a few more and so on, and now, a few years later, I was still chasing skips.

I liked having the two jobs. Being a researcher provided me the stability to do things like pay bills, while being a bounty hunter provided the excitement and variety that I craved. However, with having an increased need to get research done due to Ranger signing on so many companies, mixed with the decreased ability to roll around on the ground with the skips as I cuffed them due to the pregnancy, I had been working almost solely on Rangeman work and asking the Rangeman patrol staff to pick up my skips. I kept telling myself that I had to get used to it. After I had the baby, I didn't think Ranger would be too fond of the idea that I was skip tracing again. I missed the work though, so in addition to being queasy, I was desperately unhappy.

Ranger and I lived in the penthouse of his ultra-secure seven-story office tower in the heart of Trenton. It was a large apartment in a large building, but due to our corporate growth the building wasn't big enough. Ranger had just finished purchasing an empty plot of land that was beside our building, and next year he was intending to build another office tower on the space. The new tower would be about the same height – seven floors, but each floor would be larger than that in this building. In this building, the footprint was just over three thousand square feet. In the new tower, he wanted to double the footprint – which, since Ranger and I would have our apartment on the top floor, would mean that our apartment would be just under seven thousand square feet, including the balcony. The concept was boggling. Already I thought that our three thousand-square foot apartment was large.

I didn't know what we would do with all the space. Ranger had talked about putting in four bedroom suites in addition to a master suite, a family room, an office for him, an office for me, a sunroom, a living room, a dining room, a kitchen and a laundry room. I was just glad that Ranger wasn't suggesting that I clean the place. He said that we could hire people to do that. Since I had never enjoyed cleaning, no matter how much I liked things being clean, I greatly appreciated his intention.

Currently, our apartment was maintained by Ella, Ranger's housekeeper and staff chef. She did a fabulous job and was far more of a housekeeper than I could ever hope to be. But with the increase in staff size, doing the daily and weekly cleaning in Ranger's apartment as well as preparing three meals and snacks for the onsite staff was getting to be too much for Ella to do herself. When we moved to the new tower, Ranger intended to ask Ella to concentrate just on food preparation. As he said, cleaning the apartment didn't require any special skills, but preparing the food did and staff would be very unhappy if Ella was no longer in charge of the meals.

Ella was the only person we had told that I was pregnant, although when Ranger's mother guessed I had confirmed it. I didn't think anyone else had guessed. Of course, with just being sick in the morning, I'd been able to hide it. While the morning sickness didn't help me keep down breakfast, I was able to keep some food down by lunch uncomfortably and relatively comfortably by dinner and, since those were the two meals that I often had with other people, I was glad that I could hide my pregnancy. We didn't want anyone to know for the first three months, partly because of the risk of miscarriage and partly to give us time to get used to the concept. We hadn't planned a pregnancy, and we were still reeling. I was reeling more than Ranger, but that made sense. I would have to make the biggest changes to my life.

Ranger's concerns revolved around safety issues. Ranger owned Rangeman, but he was a former Ranger and a trainer for PMC – Private Military Contractors – an elite and covert team of people that mostly worked for government doing all the shit assignments that the government wanted either an arm's length from or didn't think were possible. The people who worked for PMC were the best of the best. While Ranger periodically was brought in to lead a team on a rescue mission, the majority of the time he was responsible for training personnel in one of two areas – to do extractions like the kind used when rescuing a kidnapped victim, and to be an effective bodyguard. While his participation in PMC was fairly innocuous now, it hadn't always been so. Before, while working for PMC, he had led raids into various drug lord compounds to shut their operations down and was a bit worried that the drug lords would push back and target him and his family for his involvement. He had told me all that a few months ago, but more recently he told me that he also had to be careful because, as a Ranger, he had been part of the team that had been responsible for taking the dead Osama Bin Laden to the ship for burial at sea. The al-Qaeda had wanted to bury him themselves and, in retaliation, had targeted all members of the SEAL team that had killed Bin Laden, and the Ranger team that had transported him. Ranger had lost a few of his friends through the al-Qaeda response to what had happened. Not one to easily share his personal feelings, he had only recently started to talk to me about that mission and the impact the subsequent deaths had on him when I had startled him one day. He had been thinking about his mission and, when I startled him, he attacked. He didn't hurt me, but he felt incredibly guilty. He said that he had never talked about it before with anyone other than his mission's teammates. Personally I thought it was about time. What this all meant, however, was that Ranger was especially anal about his personal security which, in turn, meant that I needed to be careful. Ranger was always concerned that his professional life would come back and bite him on the ass.

It didn't help that a couple of years ago his daughter from his first marriage had been kidnapped. Julie had been eleven at the time, and somebody had tried to steal Ranger's identity. To help him do that, he stole Ranger's daughter…and then he stole me. Ranger saved us but it was a scary time in our lives, and it seemed to make a deep impression on Ranger. He had been terrified that something like that could happen again, and had become even more worried about it after the wife of a friend of his, someone he had worked with at PMC, had been abducted a few months ago. Following that abduction, he had become very concerned about my safety. To make Ranger feel more comfortable, I now wore a tracker in my watch, and I drove one of his cars. I didn't really mind either concession. I had been stolen enough to appreciate having the reassurance that Ranger would know that something was wrong and that he or someone from Rangeman would come to rescue me in the event that I ran into trouble again. And his cars were nicer than anything I could afford. For that matter, so was the watch that my tracker was in.

So Ranger was concerned about having children because of the perceived danger. I was concerned about having children for other reasons.

I had never wanted children. I don't like children per se. I like my nieces because they were the people they were, not because they were children or because they related to me. I had never felt the warm fuzzies when I held a baby, never thought a bratty child was cute, never thought a child sticking a pea up his nose was funny. I didn't like changing diapers although, to be honest, who did? Kids when they smelled sweet and clean and needed books read before bed were nice, but screaming babies in the middle of the night who were convinced there were monsters in their closet despite what you said, weren't as much fun. I knew Ranger would be a good father and I'm sure that I could be a good mother. I just wasn't certain I wanted to be.

The question seemed to be moot though. Whether I wanted to be pregnant or not, I was and I was slowly acclimatizing myself to the concept. Ranger said that we could do things to make this situation work for us. In the new apartment, we were building a separate suite for a nanny. He said that having a live-in nanny would let me continue to work as much as I wanted while still providing a high quality of care for our baby. He wanted to continue to have someone in to clean our apartment and do the laundry. He said we could get the nanny to cook our meals when we didn't have time. I was still acclimatizing myself to those concepts as well. I come from the Burg, an area of Trenton characterized by hard-working families raising a multitude of children. If the mother didn't stay at home with the children, she went out to work and the children were cared for by a neighbor. Mothers didn't have nannies; mothers didn't have cleaners; and, mothers definitely didn't have chefs. When it was just Ranger and me, Ella felt like a mother and I didn't mind her doing everything for us so that we could concentrate on our jobs. We were a team and we each had our part. However, with becoming a mother myself I felt a little like I was already failing in the role just by not doing everything. Ranger said that being a supermom didn't make you a super mom, and in his eyes he felt like I could have it all.

But just like I wanted to do a good job as a mother, I also wanted to do a good job as a researcher and a bounty hunter. I think that I would be bored as a stay-at-home mother. I know I was bored doing research constantly. I liked and was proud to be a bounty hunter, and I didn't want to give it up. Did that make me selfish? Probably. I just didn't understand why I had to give up anything just to have a baby. After all, Ranger didn't have to give up anything. And I knew, no matter what Ranger said, that I would have to give up something.

Tears came to my eyes. I was always crying lately, and I didn't like it. Who wanted to be a watering pot?

Ranger entered the apartment. He had gone down to the gym for a workout. I normally got up after he had returned to the apartment and had gotten ready for the day, but with feeling so queasy in the morning lately I had been getting up when he went down for his workout, having my shower and slowly eating some breakfast when he was gone. It would take me an hour to consume the smallest amount of breakfast, but it ensured that I could finish getting ready when Ranger was eating his. This meant that the food smells from his meal wouldn't upset my stomach. I had devised this new schedule the week before when Ella had brought up Ranger's meal and the smell of the cheesy eggs made me spend the next fifteen minutes hunched over the toilet.

"Babe", said Ranger as he came into the kitchen. He looked down at the half-filled cup of peppermint tea and the scone that had one bite out of it. "Nothing's sitting well this morning?" His hand came down and massaged the back of my neck.

"No", I said in disgust, as I dropped my head down to give him better access to my neck and leaned into him. "I'm not even hungry, but I know I should eat. I keep telling myself that the scone will settle my stomach, and the peppermint tea is supposed to help. But every time I get them close to my mouth the smell of them makes my stomach lurch."

"Why don't you skip breakfast and go back to bed?"

"That feels like wimping out." I sighed. "I can do this."

"Babe."

"Seriously", I said. I broke the tiniest bite of scone off and resolutely put it in my mouth, chewed and swallowed. But seconds later I sprang to my feet and ran to the powder room, and lost the little I had eaten at breakfast.

Ranger held my hair out of my face and rubbed my back as I heaved, and when I was finished he wet a cloth and washed my face. "Better?" he said quietly.

I moaned and massaged my sore stomach. I had thrown up every morning for the last two weeks, and my stomach muscles were sore from the effort.

"Come on, babe. Lie down and I'll massage your stomach to ease the muscles before I head into the shower. Then you can rest until it is time for you to get dressed."

He pulled me to a standing position and walked with me into the bedroom, helped me down on the bed and pulled the duvet up to my waist. He undid the sash on his housecoat – I had been wearing his because wearing his clothes always made me feel better. Maybe not physically, but there was something about wearing his clothes that made me feel safe and secure. Ranger said that he liked me wearing his clothes too. Not only did he find it incredibly sexy knowing that his clothes were touching my naked body, but he also said that he found it reassuring to know that I wanted to wear his things and that I took comfort in them. I wondered if I would find the same reassurance if he wore my clothes, but then the thought of Ranger wearing my pink fuzzy housecoat was too ridiculous a picture to contemplate and I smiled.

"Are you planning on telling Morelli today?" said Ranger.

Joe Morelli was a detective within the Trenton Police Department. He also happened to be my ex-boyfriend. I'd had an on-again, off-again relationship with him for almost as long as I have known him. It started when I was in kindergarten and he wanted to play choo-choo with me. He was always the train and I was always the tunnel though, and since he never let me be the train it wasn't a game that I enjoyed playing much. By the time he took my virginity behind the counter of the Tasty Pastry when I was sixteen, I decided I liked the idea that he was the train and I was the tunnel. However, after he took my virginity he didn't call me, and I didn't like the idea much again. So when I saw him the next time, when I was eighteen, I jumped the curb in my father's car and ran him over. I broke his leg, an injury he says he remembers every time it rains. When I started skip tracing, Joe had run into problems with the law. Despite being an officer at the time, he was charged unfairly and I was the person who was sent out to retrieve him. I helped him exonerate himself, and that was the true start to our relationship. Over the years he had turned from a wild child into a respectable law-abiding citizen and was someone I had a lot of respect for. He was a good person and a good cop.

About seven months ago, Joe and I broke up for the final time. It was a breakup that had been coming for a while. I had been stuck in limbo, stuck loving both Ranger and Joe and unable to decide between the two of them. I still love them both, but Morelli's temperament meant that I was constantly feeling defensive and upset by his propensity to yell. He frequently told me that I was a disaster magnet and he didn't support the view that I could ever take care of myself. When we broke up, it felt like a weight had been taken off my shoulders, and I have since decided that although I love him, it is more a love that I have for a close friend than it was for a partner. Maybe because of that realization, it was a breakup that I handled much better than Joe. He had just recently stopped asking me to get back together with him.

He has now said that he understands why I did what I did, and I think he is now happy that we have broken up. Like me, he has done a lot of soul searching to decide what he wants in his life, and a disaster magnet like myself isn't it. I'm glad he's reached that point. Out of our relationship we've been able to retain the good parts of the friendship that we had as a couple.

But since we had just broken up seven months ago, and since I had always said that I didn't want kids, Ranger's and my pregnancy would come as a shock to Joe. Ranger and I had decided that Morelli should know before anyone else. He needed to not be taken by surprise when other people tell him in a few months.

This was important, not only because it was the right thing to do, but because Morelli and Ranger had a good working relationship. Ranger's company provided a level of service that the Trenton Police Department couldn't provide, and the TPD had used our services a few times recently. The Police Chief, Neil, had been so impressed by the quality of work that Rangeman did, however, that he decided to pay a retainer to Rangeman so that he could augment his force when needed. Ranger's men were better trained than most police officers, and for the price of two average officer salaries, the TPD was getting access to an emergency response team, a team of ten talented soldiers and a commander, at any time. We had better equipment, could outshoot and outmaneuver the TPD officers, and could mobilize faster than the Sheriff's Emergency Response Team, and that made us a valuable addition to the team.

In addition to access to our ERTs, the TPD wanted access to me. With the search engine we designed in-house, we had better information than the TPD and when they had a thorny case in front of them they wanted the ability to have us search for information. This brought more interesting work to Rangeman, which was good for me. When I was just researching potential employees and looking for problems with a series of people who didn't do anything wrong, it tended to get a little boring.

When Ranger set up the cooperation between the TPD and Rangeman, he suggested having a liaison to handle all issues, and because I already had a good relationship with Morelli and because Ranger already trusted him, he suggested Morelli as an appropriate liaison. Ranger was happy with this arrangement, as he knew Morelli would be reasonable about his requests and would refrain from demanding too much from me. Joe was happy because it meant an increase in salary for him and the ability to keep his eye on me in a more professional way, and I was happy because I trusted Joe and knew that I could work with him well.

So we had a good working relationship with Morelli and a good personal relationship as well, and neither Ranger nor I wanted to do anything to potentially rock the boat. We had decided to tell Morelli what was going on, and since I had planned on having lunch with him later that day, we had decided to tell him then.

"I'm nervous. I don't know how he'll take it."

"He might not be happy, but no matter how he feels he can't change things. He might just need a few days to get used to the idea. Just be prepared for him being upset."

"I know. I don't want to hurt his feelings."

"I understand, but if his feelings get hurt, you can't do anything about it. It wasn't like you planned this, and you didn't do this to hurt him." Ranger's massage felt good, and I closed my eyes in bliss. "Go to sleep, babe. I'll wake you before I leave for the day." And because that sounded like a good idea, I did.


	2. Chapter 2

Ranger let me sleep another hour, but since I growled at him when he woke me up, he let me sleep another hour after that and just worked in the apartment until I was awake. What that meant for me was that I was almost two hours late in getting to the office. That didn't make much of a difference. Miguel had been helping me on the research desk, but now that we were almost caught up he had returned to doing patrol. He was thankful about that. Although he was a talented researcher, he didn't like the role and was happy to not be doing it any longer.

What this meant for me was that I could adapt my hours to accommodate my needs without anyone being the wiser. This worked well for hiding my pregnancy, and instead of starting work at eight each morning I was generally starting work at nine. Today I would be starting work at ten.

As I got to my desk, I got a text from Morelli. "Have a case that came in. Is there any chance I can come to your office for a coffee instead of going out for lunch?"

I smiled. I would be happy to get the meeting over with, sooner rather than later. "Sure thing", I responded.

I started researching files, but twenty minutes later, Morelli walked into my office. With now being the liaison between Rangeman and the TPD, Ranger had given Morelli a key to the underground parking garage and the ability to walk around the offices without being escorted. Morelli appreciated and understood the expression of trust.

He had a cup of coffee in his hand as he entered. "Can you close the door?" I said.

Morelli looked surprised. I never wanted the door shut when we were together. I trusted him to not do anything, and he knew that he wouldn't do anything. Ranger knew he wouldn't do anything either, but because of our history we felt it would be better to always meet with an open door.

"What's up?" he said as he closed the door and sat down on the guest chair in front of my desk.

"I wanted to tell you something in secret. No one else around the office other than Ella knows this. None of my other friends or my family knows this either." I paused to take a deep breath as Morelli looked at me. "I'm pregnant. We aren't telling anyone until the first trimester is up, but Ranger and I wanted you to know right away."

Morelli turned still. "I thought you didn't want kids."

"I don't, but whether I want them or not is immaterial at this point. It seems the decision has been taken out of my hands." I breathed out an unhappy sigh. "I don't know if I have what it takes to be a mother."

"You'll be a good mother", said Joe. "I've always thought that. You are such a loving and a caring person that you'll be great in the role."

Tears came to my eyes. "Thanks, Joe." I grabbed a tissue and daubed at the moisture so that it wouldn't smear my mascara.

"So you're not happy about being pregnant?"

"Not really. You know that I've never had an especial love for children. They are all well and good when they are someone else's, but I like being able to give them back at the end of the night. This is still new. I'm only eight and a half weeks along, and Ranger and I haven't worked through all the issues yet. I don't know what this means for my work. I know that I want to continue working. I don't have the patience or fortitude to be a stay-at-home mother. But whether this benches me as a bounty hunter for forever we still have to work out. I'd like to continue in the role. I obviously can't do it when I am pregnant, but I'd like to do it after I have the baby. And that's professionally. Personally I'm also uncertain. Ranger and I have a good relationship, but we haven't said any words between us. We aren't married and don't plan to become married. Ranger has run into some very bad people over the course of his career, and he doesn't want a traceable association with me because he is afraid that I will be hurt by those bad people. He is concerned about me and now he's concerned about the baby as well. I understand his need to keep me separate from his professional life, but because of it there is no certainty in our relationship and I'm uncomfortable bringing a baby into an uncertain relationship. So, in short, no. I'm not happy."

"Yes, but what you and Ranger have is something special. Anyone who sees the two of you together can see that. Hell, I could see that when I was going out with you and you were just friends with him. That's why I was so jealous of him. Ranger isn't going anywhere, cupcake."

"I don't perceive that he's going anywhere either. I just don't like the idea of having a child out of wedlock. I have enough of my mother's upbringing in me to see that as a bad thing." My mother was a devout Catholic who had instilled traditional values in her two girls. Despite our upbringing, however, Val had also had a baby out of wedlock, something that horrified my mother. She had since redeemed herself by marrying the baby's father and having two more children afterwards. There would be no redemption for me.

"But you don't mind living with someone without those words spoken between you?"

"No, I don't. I figure it this way – when you go into a grocery store, you test all the tomatoes before you decide which ones you are going to buy. That's the way you decide if they are rotten or not. I don't have a lot of experience with serious relationships. Before Ranger I'd just had experience with you and Dickie." Dickie was my philandering abusive jackass of an ex-husband that I had found cheating on me after just three months of marriage. "My experience with Dickie showed that perhaps I should have tested the tomatoes beforehand. I tested the tomatoes successfully with you, but I still couldn't take testing the tomatoes for a period longer than three months comfortably. I've only lived with Ranger for nine weeks. That's not a long enough period to test the tomatoes. And that's definitely not long enough to do something like bring a baby into the equation, because if you let a baby into a pile of tomatoes they have a tendency to either eat them or throw them around the room."

Morelli smiled. "You've been testing the tomatoes with Ranger for years."

"No, I haven't. We've been fellow shoppers for years, but we didn't test the tomatoes." At least, I didn't often, but I didn't want to mention that little fact to Morelli. He looked too happy with thinking I didn't test the tomatoes, and it wouldn't serve any purpose whatsoever to have him realize that Ranger and I had periodically delved into a more physical relationship while I was going out with Morelli. And because I didn't like thinking of it either, I didn't want to get into specifics.

Besides, I thought we had veered off my original analogy. Originally, I had been talking about living together, but somehow I think it morphed into a discussion on having sex. I wasn't sure how that had happened.

"Thank you for letting me know about the pregnancy", said Morelli.

"As I said, we aren't telling anyone yet. But we didn't want to take the chance that someone guessed and blindsided you with it."

"I appreciate it."

"How are you doing with it?"

"I'm a bit shocked and surprised and, I have to admit, a bit envious. I'd like to have kids, but I haven't found the right person yet and I wish I had what you and Ranger have. You two have the best relationship I have ever seen. However, what I mostly feel is happy for you and Ranger. I think that I am happier about your pregnancy than you are. I think that any baby with you as parents will be a very lucky baby."

Tears came to my eyes. "Thanks, Joe. It means a lot to me that you aren't mad. I was worried that you'd be upset."

"No, I'm not upset. I'm pleased that you told me."

The tears overflowed and streamed down my cheeks. "Shit", I said. "I can't seem to stop crying."

Morelli smiled sympathetically. "How else are you feeling?"

"Tired. Weepy and easily irritated. I blow up over the smallest little thing and am ready to pick a fight over nothing. Nauseous in the morning. I can't keep my breakfast down. But by the lunch, my stomach is steadier and by dinner I'm fine. Ella is making sure that there are lots of scones and peppermint tea in the break room because I seem to be able to keep them down more than anything else, and I seem to be craving raisin scones." I shook my head. "That's enough about me and my continuing drama in my life. Tell me about your most recent case that you caught and why you could meet me now but not later."

"The crematorium has reported thefts of people's remains. We don't know why the ashes are being stolen, nor do we know who is doing the thefts. We are at the beginning of our investigation yet. It just came to us last night, but I want to make the rounds of the funeral homes here in Trenton today, and they don't open until eleven at the earliest."

"How many people have had their ashes stolen?"

"Apparently five, but they've been substituting ashes from dead dogs so that no one notices. However, someone in the crematorium reported the theft. When we got there yesterday, the higher-ups were surprised to see us."

"So somebody could be burying poor Fluffy thinking they were burying Grandma?"

"Yes."

"That's sick."

"I know. The people who have had their loved one's ashes replaced will be furious. That's something I plan on telling them later on today, probably after I go to the funeral homes and see what is happening there. I also have to review all the people who work in the crematorium. There has to be a link there somehow."

"Let me know if I can help."

"Thanks, I will. Are you still frantically busy?"

"No. In fact, Miguel has now gone back to doing patrol as of last Monday, and my job has reverted to being its normally busy. The difference is that I'm only creating the capture plans for the skips rather than going out and arresting them myself, and Rangeman is doing the capturing for me. It means that I'm earning less money, but because Ranger says I am doing him a favor and is paying a greater percentage of the capture fee to me, I'm not earning much less."

"Will you go out skip tracing while you are pregnant?"

"No, I won't. It is hard to get a bulletproof vest that fits a pregnant body for one, and right now my best capture plan would be to throw up on them and gross them out so that I could arrest them."

Morelli smiled. "It wouldn't be the first time you'd thrown up on a felon", he said.

I laughed as I remembered that, a few weeks before, a punk accosted me and told me that he was going to abduct me and make me into a 'ho for him to pimp out. He told me that he was planning on getting me addicted to drugs. My response was to throw up on him, and when he jumped back out of the way of a second wave of vomit, I jumped in my car and drove like a bat out of hell away from him.

"That's true", I said. "But that time it wasn't morning sickness. It was the fourteen doughnuts that I had eaten that made me sick to my stomach."

Morelli laughed.

"How are you doing with not going out to capture skips?" he said.

"I miss it. I miss the people, I miss the variety, and I miss spending time with Lula and Connie. I keep telling myself that it isn't for forever, but I don't know if it is for forever. I need to talk to Ranger about that and come to some agreement, but I haven't wanted to bring up the subject in case he tells me that he would prefer not to have me chase skips anymore."

"You need to talk to him about it."

"I know. I have shades of my mother running though my head though, with her wanting me to get pregnant to try to stop me from doing skip tracing."

"Somehow I suspect that Ranger, more than anyone I have ever met, would understand your need to capture skips. He gets you, cupcake. Give it a chance and talk to him. It would be better than tearing yourself up about it."

"I know. Do you think that I would have a chance to still go skip tracing after the baby is born?"

"I think that you have a chance, although Ranger might prefer if you take a Rangeman staff rather than Lula. Lula is a great person, but she is a pretty ineffective backup." That was true. Lula was a former 'ho, a big, beautiful woman who had an outlandish fashion sense and a penchant for wearing five-inch heels and a lot of spandex. She couldn't run, couldn't shoot and, despite her best efforts, did not look scary or intimidating. Morelli had, at times, called us the Lucy and Ethyl bounty hunters and no matter how much I didn't like the description, I could see his point. But what we didn't have in ability we had in smarts, and although we often didn't catch people the first time around, we did capture people eventually. We had over a ninety percent capture rate which was excellent, and we had fun doing it at the same time. I always liked spending time with Lula, whether it was on a stakeout or taking down a felon. We'd had some good times, and I would miss having more.

"See? That's the hard part. I don't want to give up my association with Lula." I subsisted into an unhappy frown.

"Talk to Ranger about it." Morelli drained his cup. "I'm sorry, cupcake, but I need to go. Thanks for letting me know."

"Thanks for not being upset, and thanks for letting me unload on you. With you being the only other person who knows, I haven't been able to talk to anyone about things, and I feel like I am going nuts. It doesn't help that I want to cry all the time."

"Any time you want to talk, you know where I am."

Tears came to my eyes. "Thanks, Joe." I sniffled and grabbed another tissue. "Shit", I said.

Joe laughed.


	3. Chapter 3

Connie sent me files for three more skips. Connie Rosolli was the office manager for the bonds office. Second-generation Italian, she had ties to the mob that she didn't like to talk about but that meant that she brought a lot of business to the bonds office. She was a little shorter than me, a little older than me, a little curvier than me, and a lot better shot and a lot more vindictive than me. She was loyal and smart, and was a good person to have watching your back. I was lucky that she'd been watching my back ever since I had started skip tracing for Vinnie. We had a good working relationship and, more importantly, a good friendship. No matter what, I could always count on her support.

I put the files aside to look at later as Ranger stuck his head into my office. "Do you have a minute to look at architectural blueprints?" he said.

"Sure do", I said. I followed him down to his office, where the floor plans were spread out on the conference table in his room.

"I was hoping that you would look particularly at the plans for our new apartment." He shut the door and turned me into his arms. "How did it go with Morelli?" he asked.

"Well. He was honestly happy for us. I think he's looking forward to being an uncle. He said we had the best relationship out of anyone he knows."

"He cares deeply about you."

"I care deeply about him as well. I didn't break up with him because I didn't care about him. It was because I cared about him that we lasted as long as we did. It's just that I think of him as one of my closest friends and not anything else."

"I know. It was important to you that he was okay with the news."

"Yes, it was. He was positive and supportive, and said that he was probably happier about it than I am."

Ranger kissed me on the top of my head, and sat down on a chair at the table. He pulled me down onto his knee, enclosed me in his arms, and held me securely. I rested my head on his shoulder and sniffed the comforting smell of his signature scent, Bulgari Green. It was the scent of his body wash and it clung to him throughout the day, no matter what he'd spent his day doing. I didn't know how he did it. Even though we used the same body wash, the same scent didn't cling to my skin the same way.

"How are you feeling about the pregnancy now that you've had a chance to get used to the idea? We haven't talked about it since we first found out three weeks ago."

"I'm still not settled about it." I paused and bit my lip.

"What is it, babe?" asked Ranger softly.

"I know I can't go out skip tracing while I'm pregnant. It isn't unheard of to get hit while subduing a skip, and that could cause a problem with the baby. I don't like it, but I've accepted it. However, I haven't accepted that I'd have to stop doing captures completely." I sniffled and pulled a tissue from my pocket. "Shit – I'm crying again."

Ranger smiled sympathetically. "I don't think you have to quit. You are a bounty hunter, and you're a good one. I respect that and am not going to tell you what to do. But I do want you to realize that you have Rangeman behind you. If you just want to do surveillance with Lula on skips and have us pick them up, then that is something we can do. If you want to pick up the easy skips with Lula and have us pick up the harder ones, that's something we can do as well. Personally, I'd prefer not to have you pick up those skips who have proven to be violent, but that's true whether you have a baby, are pregnant or are just a member of the Rangeman team. I say that because I love you and don't want to think of you going into dangerous situations. However, a good percentage of fugitives have skipped court for innocuous reasons, whether it was just because they forgot or were just unable to make it, or whatever. Some skips you have developed a personal relationship with." That was true. There were some skips that I had brought in time and time again, and since I knew them I would do things like do a drive through of the local McDonald's on the way to the precinct so that I knew they weren't hungry while they were waiting. Some skips looked forward to being brought in. They liked the lunch, they liked the stories Lula told of being a former 'ho, they liked the excitement we brought to their lives. I would miss the personal interaction with them. "I'm not asking you to give up your life. I don't think that is good for you or the baby. If you did, you'd resent the baby and that doesn't make for a good parent-child relationship. I honestly believe that a baby always knows."

"Skip tracing doesn't always follow standard nine-to-five hours."

"I know that. My job can be a little more regulated than yours, but we have designed the penthouse floor to have a nanny suite, and we can ask the nanny to be flexible on the time that she works each day. If one day you are working from two to ten rather than nine to five, we can have the nanny and me look after the baby so that you can do your job. However, you also have the option of setting up the capture during your nine-to-five hours and having Rangeman do the capture in non-standard hours. You have lots of options in front of you and although quitting working for Vinnie is one of them, it isn't necessarily an option that you are now required to take."

"I don't want to leave Vinnie high and dry."

"You wouldn't be. I got out of primarily skip tracing when I was growing my company. Now Rangeman employs enough staff to ensure that we can meet Rangeman needs at the same time as satisfying Vinnie's needs. In fact, Les Sebring has been asking me to go back to skip tracing as well, and I'm thinking about taking him on too and having you do the capture plans for those skips in addition to your regular work. You are the best person to do the capture plans because you know both the research aspect as well as how to do the job of skip tracing. You're just providing another income stream for us."

"But most of that money from Vinnie goes to me."

"And you do most of the work. You are the one researching the felons and creating the capture plans. You are simply handing over the pickup to us. That's okay. I'm pleased with the division of the capture fee."

"According to our new capture fee breakdown, I get sixty percent, Lula gets ten percent and Rangeman gets thirty percent."

"Yes."

"I'd like to change it back to our original breakdown that we had a year ago, with Rangeman getting sixty percent, me getting thirty percent and Lula getting ten." Ranger thought about that for a moment. I could tell that he was uncomfortable with it. "Please?" I said. "We can always renegotiate when we follow a different capture pattern if Lula and I are doing surveillance and letting Rangeman pick up the skips."

Ranger sighed. "This is going to get confusing for Connie. How about keeping it the same now and after the baby is born, and have us earn forty percent, Lula ten percent, and you fifty percent."

"Fifty for you, forty for me, and ten for Lula, and you have a deal. I'm not willing to go below fifty percent for you."

Ranger sighed again, but I knew that I had won. Just like he knew that, no matter what he said, I could have just told Connie the percentages that I wanted to be paid out and there would be little that he could do about it. "Okay", he said.

I smiled, and Ranger shook his head. I could see that he was thinking about smiling though.

He angled my head up and gave me a deep kiss. His hands roamed, and just when it was getting interesting he eased back again.

"Bastard", I said without heat.

Ranger smiled a half-smile, and I shook my head. He chuckled. "Tonight, babe", he said. "I wanted to run those blueprints past you. I have a meeting tomorrow with the architect to finalize things."

I looked at the plans. There was an elevator in the middle of the floor, and the apartment wound around it. The elevator opened directly onto the foyer. "The floor will be accessed by a key card combined with a key. Both will be used simultaneously on the elevator and, if the two aren't used simultaneously, you won't be able to access our floor", said Ranger. "The key card combination will also be required to access the floor through the stairwell, although anyone will be able to leave the floor through the stairwell at any time. The combination of the two will make it harder for people get onto our floor, which means that we won't need to have a front door on our apartment. Besides, I've always wanted an apartment that didn't have a front door." I laughed. "Seriously, isn't it the epitome of being wealthy?" I laughed again, but I agreed with him at the same time. I had never known anyone that had an elevator open directly onto their apartment either. "The apartment itself has all the features we talked about, including a nice large kitchen for you to cook in." His lips twitched as he struggled not to laugh at the expression on my face. I was the world's worst cook and anything above making coffee was beyond my capabilities.

"Smart ass", I said. He grinned. "Besides, you can do the cooking."

Ranger smiled. "That's true", he said, "although if this company keeps growing the way it is I won't have time to sneeze let alone cook."

"Just as long as you don't do the two things at once. I don't like it when people sneeze in my food."

Ranger chuckled. "What do you think of the plans?"

"I like them", I said. "I like that a belvedere is added to the plans this time. It would be nice, I think, to have the option to sit outside if we desired it."

"It would be good for the kids as well, as they'd be able to play out on the belvedere. It's big enough for our kids to learn how to ride bikes out there."

"I also like the skylights that have been added, and the fact that there is a gas fireplace in the family room, the living room the bedroom and in each of our offices and the nanny's suite. We currently live in a fancy apartment. This apartment is more like a mansion in size. Can we afford that?"

"Yes, we can. Or we can with the bank's help. The mortgage is reasonable. I'll manage the provision of the apartment the way that I am currently managing the provision of this one in that we'll pay a reasonable rent for the space. That will help us pay for the mortgage."

"I know that it's probably a drop in the bucket, but I have that hundred and fifty thousand from Dickie that I'd like to use on our place." About a month ago, my ex-husband asked Ranger to protect him from some thugs that his bookie had sent out to encourage him to pay up the money that he owed. What he didn't know, in addition to the thugs that the bookie had sent, was a greater threat – FBI agents who were looking for him.

I had never told anyone that Dickie used to regularly threaten to hit me. The first time he followed through on his promise, I left him. And until Ranger guessed that I had been a victim of domestic abuse, I hadn't admitted it to anyone either. When Ranger heard that, however, he got mad and did a search into Dickie's life, and found that Dickie wasn't claiming a substantial amount of money on his taxes. He told Morelli, and Morelli hooked him up with the FBI. Dickie was literally asking Ranger for protection from the people that Ranger had sicced on him in the first place.

When Ranger signed Dickie on as a client, he asked for a fifty thousand-dollar retainer. He also asked for a hundred thousand-dollar aggravation fee, which would be refunded in the event that Dickie did everything he was asked to do by Rangeman staff. In addition to those two fees, Ranger charged Dickie fifteen hundred dollars a day for round-the-clock protection services and the ability to stay in a safe house. Dickie agreed to all that.

Needless to say, Dickie didn't do what he was supposed to do, because Dickie _never_ did what he was supposed to do. Rangeman collected their daily fee but, when they cashed the checks for the aggravation fee and their retainer, Rangeman gave them to me for the pain and suffering I went through as his wife. I didn't think that was very fair, but Ranger wouldn't accept anything other than giving me the money. He said I deserved it because Dickie had never paid the alimony I had been awarded when our divorce became final. He also said that he was charging Dickie twice as much per day as he normally charged, which meant that he came out ahead in the interaction. By the end of the protection detail, Ranger and I were happy and Dickie wasn't, and that was just the way we liked it.

"That's your money, babe", said Ranger.

"Yes, but you currently pay for everything. You pay for the apartment and my food and my car and my utilities and house taxes. You have even taken over the lease on my apartment so that you can keep it as a safe house. I'm not paying for anything, and it makes me feel a little icky. I'm earning a good salary now, and I have that pool of money from Dickie to draw from. I want to be an equal partner in this relationship. To do that, I want and need to pay my share."

"You don't need to. I'm earning a good salary from the company. As the CEO, including bonuses I earn a salary that is five times what you earn."

"That may be, but if I put my money from Dickie into the apartment there would be a little less that the company would have to pay off on the building. Additionally, if I put my money into the rental of the apartment, the company would be able to pay off the mortgage on the building that much sooner. Yes, it wouldn't make a huge difference, but it would be a difference. More importantly, it would make me feel better."

Ranger thought for a moment. "I don't want to mix your money with the company's money in paying for the construction of the building. It's too confusing. It's why I don't put my money in either. How about we open up a joint checking account and the money you earn through Rangeman and the money I earn through Rangeman goes into it? The money you earn skip tracing and the money I earn through PMC can be our own money."

"But I want to do something for us with my money from Dickie."

"I understand that." He thought some more. "If you are serious, one option you have is to lend the money to the company as a private mortgage. We would pay a little over prime, which is more than you would earn through the bank, and it's a guaranteed return, which makes it a good deal for you. It's a way of growing your money at the same time as helping the company out. I'm doing that with a lot of my own savings as well. Additionally, if we are pooling our salaries, we'd be able to pay more in rent for our apartment, which means that we'll be able to free up more money to pay off the mortgage faster."

I smiled. "Thank you", I said. I didn't know how to tell Ranger, but I had been feeling very uncomfortable with the lack of words said between us. Doing something as simple – or as complex, depending upon which way you look at it – as sharing finances was something that well-established couples did. Something that only those willing to pull together on the same side of the rope of life would do. Ranger accepting my money meant far more than a simple currency exchange. It was a sign that we were working together towards a common goal.

That was exactly what I wanted.


	4. Chapter 4

Ranger and I headed down to the gym, ready to work out for an hour. Exercising wasn't something I enjoyed, but I had to say that working out with Ranger had its benefits and, now that I was pregnant, those benefits had multiplied.

For the last few months, Ranger had been teaching me self-defense. I liked that portion of our exercise program. Getting hot and sweaty and grappling with him as I learned how to get out of holds always counted as a good time in my books. However, the fifteen minutes of cardio and the stretching I could do without. Stretching was something that came easily to babies and chimpanzees and I was neither. Neither was Ranger, but he seemed to be able to do amazing things that I didn't think the human body was meant to do. So stretching wasn't my favorite activity, but even that was preferable doing cardio. I hated running, or cycling, or using the stairmaster or…well, you get the idea. Doing cardio made me sweat between my boobs, and I didn't think that was natural. Since becoming pregnant, my boobs especially didn't like cardio. All that jiggling and jumping was painful, and I had been successful at getting out of cardio as a result.

The bad part was that Ranger had made a deal with me a few months before that, for every fifteen minutes I did of cardio, I got a free dessert. Ranger didn't believe in eating dessert and never requested some from Ella when he was asking for dinner to be sent up. I didn't agree with Ranger. No matter how good dinner was, I always thought the star of the show was dessert. So Ranger made a deal that he would ask for dessert every time I did cardio, and bribing me seemed to work. Except for when he had to travel out of town, I had been doing fifteen minutes of cardio every day since he had enforced that rule. When he travelled out of town Ella made me dessert as a consolation prize, and I didn't have to exercise to get it. It was the only good thing about him having to travel.

When it was no longer comfortable to do cardio, I had been worried that I wouldn't be able to earn dessert. Ranger, fortunately, thought that getting pregnant was an excellent way to earn dessert, and he'd been asking Ella to make dessert for me anyway. Of course, the dessert I'd been eating was a lot of milk-based foods – rice pudding, custard, pudding, ice cream. I guess he figured that, if I was going to consume the calories, I might as well get needed calcium as well. As far as I could tell, getting un-earned dessert was one of the few – if not the only – benefits to becoming pregnant.

I was just glad that I hadn't developed an unhealthy obsession with gravy. My sister, with all her pregnancies, craved gravy and she'd eat it by the spoonful and drink it by the cupful if she could. She ate a _lot_ of gravy, and she gained a _lot_ of weight as a result. It would take her months to lose the weight and, when she did, she'd become pregnant again and the whole cycle started all over. I had watched it three times already. I had missed it the first two times since she was living on the other side of the country. She had recently had a baby boy, and she was now on the weight-loss portion of her cycle. I was hoping that her husband would finally get the snip so that she didn't go on the pregnancy/weight gain portion of the cycle again. There are only so many times, I thought, that you should ask the human body to gain and lose so much weight in such a short period of time. I figured that, no matter how natural having a baby was, it wasn't natural for the body to increase and decrease sixty or seventy pounds every year or two.

So I was glad that it was raisin scones that I craved rather than gravy. And milk. I craved milk, and not even the chocolate kind, which was good since I wasn't supposed to eat chocolate. I drank a lot of milk. I drank some before bed. I drank some when I first got up in the morning. And I drank some at lunch and dinner as well. In commiseration, Ranger was drinking milk with me. I had told him that he could still drink wine, like he often did previously, but he said it didn't matter to him. He said that he liked milk just as much as he liked wine, and he didn't want to drink wine in front of me. I appreciated the sentiment even though I told him it wasn't necessary.

We got to the gym and Ranger scrambled the feed as all the people working out in the gym left the premises. Ranger had a habit of shutting down the gym when I worked out with him. He said it was because he didn't want to take the chance that the one of his employees hurt himself through watching me rather than watching what they were doing. However, I knew it was because Ranger got a little possessive and didn't like other men watching me when I worked out. Since I preferred to work out in my sports bra and pants, I could see his point. While I had frequently told him that my breasts were just lumps of fat, he had just as frequently told me that they were _his_ lumps of fat, and he didn't want any other man admiring them.

But Ranger didn't only shut the gym down to a private training session. He also scrambled the feed. There were few places in the Rangeman building that weren't monitored. The offices were all monitored. The hallways were all monitored. The elevators and the gym and the parking garage and the shooting range were all monitored. The only areas in the building, in fact, that weren't monitored were Ranger's office, the bathrooms, the gym change room, and the individual apartments. But Ranger was worried that, if the feed from the gym wasn't scrambled, the staff would all be watching what was happening in the gym rather than what was happening in all the other places that we monitor, and the service provided would be downgraded.

"We'll do this like we have the last couple of weeks", he said. "Every move we do will be in slow motion. I don't want to take the chance that you'll get hurt." He led me through the stretches. I was just pleased that I was more limber than I was when we had first started doing stretches. As Ranger said, stretching would never come naturally to me, but with practice I could be more flexible than I was.

What I didn't like about stretching was that I didn't have anything to show that I was making an improvement. It wasn't like I could suddenly see that I could stretch much farther one day than I did the day before. If I was running, I could see how far I could run before I got winded (usually about three steps). If I was swimming, I could see how fast I could get from one end of the pool to the other (slower than I could walk). If I was shooting, I could see how many shots I could get into the inner black circle (not many). But with stretching, I had no basis to judge my improvement. I had no ability to see if I was getting better, and that was disheartening. Ranger said that he saw an improvement, but I think he was just saying that to humor me.

After stretching, we moved to the self-defense portion of our workout. Ranger showed me how to get out of holds, and we practiced extensively. A couple of weeks before, I had surprised Ranger from behind, and he spun and put me in a choke hold before he realized that it was me standing there. He had been devastated and ashamed, but I had taken it in stride. I had been more shocked that I'd been able to surprise Ranger. He was always so aware of his surroundings that in all the time I had known Ranger, I had never surprised him before and I felt bad that I had scared him that morning. Ranger had seen a lot of action over the years, and most of it wasn't good. However, with being pregnant he had pumped up his concern that I didn't know how to get out of holds effectively and he worried that, with my upcoming loss of balance, I wouldn't be able to protect myself adequately. Already in the habit of sparring every day, he became more fanatical about learning how to defend myself from positions like a rape position on the floor, and he became more focused on teaching me an aikido style of fighting rather than the krav maga that he had been teaching me before.

After fighting for an hour, we ended with some more stretches. Ranger slung his arm over my shoulder and, as we walked out of the gym, he said, "do you have any more skips to chase?"

"Rangeman has caught me up on the skips that I have researched so far. Hal and Hector went out and got Amelia Lu today, but Connie sent over new ones that I haven't researched yet."

"What was Amelia Lu arrested for?"

"Stealing a dozen hamburger buns. She is a former Marine and she didn't have enough money to buy food. The food bank refused to give her any more. It is stories like that which make me think there is something wrong with our social system."

"You don't prescribe to the theory that everyone should get out there and hustle to provide an income for themselves?"

"I don't know. I'm of two minds on that. I've met some people who have perfectly good minds and bodies who, for some reason, have turned to a life of crime. Sure, I'm just like anyone else and don't want to help them out. But those are the minority. I meet many more people in my travels who either have some physical or mental challenges to overcome, or don't have the support to improve their lives, or just need a helping hand to get them out of the situation they are in, and I think those people should be supported. If we don't help them, how can we ever expect them to improve their lot in life? It doesn't happen by wishful thinking. Since they are of the majority, I wonder if we have the right to penalize the majority for the sake of the minority."

"That's one of the many reasons I hire returning vets. Yes, they have proven to be the best employees for Rangeman. They require less training and are grateful to be hired by a company that values their skills. However, I also hire returning vets for the social reasons. The last I read, veterans accounted for twelve percent of the homeless but only 7.6 percent of the general population. It's a shocking and disgusting discrepancy. These are people who have volunteered to fight for our country, yet when they return they can't find jobs or don't have the social supports needed to help them reintegrate into everyday life. Sometimes these military personnel are struggling, either mentally, physically or financially.

"Employment is a two-way street. When I hire someone, I get a trained person who is good in a fight, and who is slow to anger and doesn't fly off the handle at small things. In return, they get a salary and a place to go that values them and what they can do. They get support through other employees who understand the challenges they face. I have also just hired a therapist to work for the company. He will be working out of the HR department. Thirty percent of returning vets have a mental illness of some sort. I can't address the failure of society in their lack of support for vets. I can, however, address it in my own company."

We reached the elevator and pushed the button. I snugged into his body and kissed his shoulder. "That is one of the reasons I love you. You're a good man."

"Shh", said Ranger with a smile. "Don't tell anyone. I don't want it getting out."

I laughed. "I think it's too late for that. There is a reason your staff would follow you into fire."

Ranger flushed. "I don't know about that."

"I do", I said as I tried not to laugh at his embarrassment. "Your staff is happy and I haven't met one staff member who doesn't think that you walk on water."

"My staff is everything. Without them, I wouldn't have a company."

The elevator came, and we walked on. Hector was already on the elevator, and he was going up to the fifth floor for some dinner. "How was your day?" asked Ranger.

"Good. It was a quiet day on patrol. Amelia Lu came with us as pleasant as anything. I think she was looking forward to being put in jail as she would get three square meals per day there. Just judging by her, she had gone a long time without food before she stole those buns. She's skin and bones. Hal and I took a page from your book, Steph. On the way to the precinct we took her for a meal at McDonald's. She hardly ordered anything, so Hal and I ordered extra and then told her that we couldn't eat it all. I have never seen anyone eat as quickly as she did. It was sad."

"I know", I said. "Lula and I see a lot of cases like that."

"Charge the meal to Rangeman", said Ranger. "That shouldn't come out of your pocket."

"Thanks, Ranger, but Hal and I were glad to purchase the meal for her. It was our way of honoring who she was and what she did with her life."

"Thank you for doing that", said Ranger.

"You're a good man", I said. I tiptoed up and kissed Hector on his cheek. "Thank you."

Hector turned red and, when we got up to the fifth floor, he said goodbye and escaped.

"I wish I could find a good woman for him", I said.

Ranger smiled. "Are you opening up a matchmaking service?"

"No. The only unattached women that I know are my grandmother, Connie, Lula and Joyce Barnhardt." Joyce Barnhardt was my childhood nemesis. We had a history that started with her purposely spilling red paint over my new dress on picture day when I was in kindergarten. The epitome was when she boinked my husband after only three months of Dickie's and my marriage. After I got my anger out by defaming her with everyone I knew, I found that maintaining that level of anger was exhausting and I decided to ignore her. However, she wasn't as happy to have the people in Trenton all calling her an adulteress, and in the game of one-upmanship she tried to get even by boinking Vinnie and stealing both my skips and my boyfriends. Ranger had never fallen into her bed, despite her best efforts. She was a cow, no disrespect to cows. I was sure she would have some pithy comments about me being pregnant without being married and would think herself superior. A wave of sadness washed over me, and tears came to my eyes.

"Babe?" he said as he guided me off the elevator and over to the door to the apartment. He unlocked the door and led me into the flat, threw his keys on the antique hall table, and turned me into his arms. "What's going on?"

"Nothing", I said. I sniffled once and prayed that the tears wouldn't fall. I knew he didn't want to get married. It wasn't fair to him that I wanted to change the rules now. He had been very upfront with me regarding his need to avoid marriage. He wasn't avoiding commitment. He was just avoiding the traditional way of showing it.

Ranger had been great. It had been my idea to stop using condoms, and Ranger went along with it. I still don't know how we became pregnant. The natural reaction would be for Ranger to blame me for the pregnancy, but he hadn't mentioned a word of censure. Although having a baby wasn't his choice either, he'd been very supportive now that we were pregnant. He had tolerated the tears and the moods, the worry and the morning sickness. No matter what I did or said, he didn't take it personally.

I couldn't repay that steadiness buy getting angry about him not marrying me. I reminded myself that I was in a committed relationship. It just didn't come with a ring.

"Babe?"

I shook my head and burrowed into his shoulder, breathed deeply and tried not to cry.

He lifted me up and carried me into the office, sat down on the sofa and arranged me on his lap so that my head was tucked into his shoulder and his arms were around me. He smoothed my hair away from my face and sat quietly, and waited for me to speak as I struggled to get control of my emotions.

"Babe? Tell me", he said.

I shook my head.

Ranger looked at me, his forehead furrowed. He waited some more, but I couldn't tell him. It wasn't fair and I knew it wasn't fair. And I had always prided myself on being a fair person.


	5. Chapter 5

Ranger and I showered together, and Ranger treated me as though I was made of spun glass. He cherished me as he made love to me, and I had never felt more treasured.

After he dried me off, he said quietly, "Why don't you have a nap before dinner? I asked Ella to make us a special meal. We're celebrating."

"What are we celebrating?"

"That's a surprise." He smiled. He knew that sort of comment would typically have my nose twitching with curiosity, and this was no different. "You'll have to wait."

"I don't want to wait."

"This needs to be done in the proper order", said Ranger, "and no matter what you say, I will only do it in the proper order. Which means a sleep first, and then dinner."

"But I will die of curiosity before then."

Ranger laughed. "I don't think someone can die from curiosity", he said.

"I'm sure I could be the first." Ranger laughed again as he led me to the bed and helped me down on the mattress. He pulled the duvet up and over my shoulders as I looked at him. "Won't you lie down with me?"

Ranger smiled and kissed my nose. "I have some things I still have to do to get ready for your surprise. I have to go out for an hour or so, but I'll be back for dinner."

He smiled when I pouted a bit, before he kissed me on the top of my head and left the room.

I was tired, and although I wasn't sure if I could sleep, I pulled over Ranger's pillow and buried my face into it so that I could smell his scent, and that worked in the usual way that it did when Ranger was out of town. I was asleep within minutes with a smile on my face.

An hour and a half later, Ranger came through and kissed me awake. "Ella will be through in a few minutes with dinner", he said.

I groggily opened my eyes. "How long did I sleep?"

"About an hour and a half."

"Hopefully this means that I won't fall asleep on you tonight when we're watching television", I said. The last few nights I had fallen asleep leaning into Ranger, and he'd had to carry me to bed. Luckily, I had prepared for it by dressing in my nightwear so that Ranger wouldn't have to change me. It wouldn't be the first time that he had undressed me because I was too tired.

"I didn't mind", said Ranger. "There is something satisfying to know that your woman feels secure enough and relaxed enough around you to fall asleep on you."

I laughed. "Then you must be satisfied quite a lot", I said.

Ranger thought about smiling. "You're the most satisfying person that I have ever met."

"Are we still talking about me falling asleep on you?"

His lips quirked up in a smile. "It can refer to whatever you want. It's more of a blanket statement."

I smiled. "Good to know."

"I hope that we can mutually satisfy each other later tonight."

I looked at him hopefully. "We could mutually satisfy each other now", I said.

"Although that sounds intriguing, Ella will be up soon for dinner and I still want to give you your surprise."

"Okay", I said. He laughed when he saw my grin and happy scrambling to get out of the bed. "Let me finish in the bathroom and I'll be right out." In preparation for our mutual satisfaction, I didn't dress in nightwear but instead put on Ranger's housecoat. I was glad that I had gone down for my nap naked.

I washed my face with cold water, used the facilities and brushed my teeth. I was ready for anything.

I walked out of the bathroom. Ranger was waiting for me, and he took my hand and led me into the dining room. The table was set for two. There were fresh-cut red roses and baby's breath and ferns in a beautiful arrangement, lit tapers in crystal candle holders, and a bottle of chilled non-alcoholic wine in an ice bucket on the table. At my place setting was a pale gray leather ring box. I looked at him, my eyes wide, and I sank down on the chair.

Ranger's lips quirked up in a half smile as he got down on his knee, but he looked uncharacteristically nervous.

He lifted my hand and kissed it. "I can't marry you, babe. I just don't feel comfortable having a connection between the two of us documented in a state record. You know as well as I know that a record like that is too easy to discover and I don't want to put you in danger. However, I feel uncomfortable not having any words between us. I am committed to you and I want to shout that out to the rooftops. I love you. I have loved you since the day I first met you. I saw you and that was it for me. I had never believed in love at first sight before, but seeing you that first time made me a believer. I just never thought that I would ever have a future with you. I never thought I would be lucky enough." He paused to swallow hard. "I would die if anything happened to you", he said quietly. "Unlike when I proposed to Rachel, this doesn't have anything to do with the baby and has everything to do with you. I want the words said in front of God. I was wondering if you would consider going through a commitment ceremony with me. It's the same as the marriage ceremony, without an official recognition by the state. We will, however, be married in the eyes of the church."

"I didn't even know that one could do that."

"It's quite a common thing to happen, actually. I've been doing research into it. It's just that I want to marry you so fucking much. I want those words said in front of God. I'm not particularly religious, but I believe in a God and saying those words in front of God is important to me. So I guess what I am saying is, would you do me the honor of marrying me? Do you think that you would be interested in affirming our love for each other and speaking of our commitment in front of God?"

I wiped the tears from my face. "Yes. That's what I was crying about earlier. I knew the score of not getting married before we got together, and I felt guilty for wanting something so badly that I had known from the beginning was impossible. I want to be married to you. I want the words said in front of God. I'm not particularly religious either, but that sort of commitment is important to me. I'm a fairly traditional person, and moving in together didn't feel right without the words spoken between us, without the commitment formalized. I know that the marriage ceremony is just words, that it doesn't affect the love and commitment we share – but I think those words are important."

Ranger's eyes turned soft, and he kissed my hand. "Do you think you would mind taking off Morelli's promise ring and perhaps switching it to your other hand? I want to put my ring on your finger." I guess I looked surprised, because Ranger smiled. "Did you think I wouldn't want to put my ring on your finger?"

"No. I'm just surprised because I forgot Morelli's ring was there. Why didn't you ask me to take it off before?"

Ranger eased Morelli's ring from my finger. "He was an important part of your history. I just thought that you weren't ready to take the ring off. I was actually quite nervous about asking you to marry me because of it, but I didn't think I could wait any longer for you to remove it. I wanted to ask you to marry me for a long time and, in fact, commissioned this ring to be made about two months ago – before you had even moved in with me. I had hoped that you would take Morelli's ring off on your own and give me the sign that you were ready to marry me."

"I am so sorry! I've been ready to marry you for a while. I never even thought about Morelli's ring. Since it's a friendship ring, I knew it didn't mean anything other than friendship."

"It's on your left hand, on your ring finger."

"That's true. That was just the finger that he put it on when he gave it to me, and I haven't taken it off since. It had become a part of me and I didn't even notice any longer."

He smiled. "Hopefully you won't become complacent with this one", he said. "Unlike Morelli's ring, this ring is a promise between the two of us for our future, a ring that speaks of our love and our commitment." He opened the ring box and slid a ring onto my finger. It was beautiful. Made of platinum, it was a five-stone ring. The outermost stones were made of three small diamonds, then a larger single diamond flanking each side of a large middle diamond. It looked like the diamonds were bleeding out onto the shank. It was the prettiest ring that I had ever seen.

"I liked the symbolism of the three-stone ring, with the past, present and future meaning", said Ranger as I wiped more tears from my face. "We have a long past, a great present and I hope a promising future. However, I liked the symbolism behind the two-stone rings as well, with the friends and lovers meaning. You are my best friend, and you are the only lover I want in my bed. I decided to combine those two rings and make it a five-stone ring." He paused and held my hand so that I could see it from the side. "I had the stones set so that there were three open hearts forming the prongs for the three larger stones. The hearts again are for the past, present and future settings."

"How did you know my ring size?"

Ranger smiled. "About two months ago I measured your hand with a piece of string when you were sleeping, and I took that string to the jeweler's when I commissioned your ring to be made. Do you really like the ring?"

I grinned. "Are you kidding? I _love_ the ring. It's the prettiest ring that I have ever seen."

Ranger smiled in relief.

"What will we tell people? They might notice that my ring has changed."

"Most people wouldn't notice, I think."

"I agree that most people wouldn't notice, but I suspect my mother and grandmother will, and Lula and Connie might as well. And that brings up another point. Do you want to invite people to the commitment ceremony? I would assume that we are keeping this as a secret ceremony?"

"Yes, I think we should keep this as a secret, but it would personally mean a lot to me to have our closest relatives invited. It would mean something to me to have my parents and grandmother and sisters and brother and Julie there. I'd also like to invite my Uncle Alejandro and my Aunt Tia, just like I'm sure that you'd like to invite your parents and sister and grandmother. I was also thinking that I'd like to invite Tank. Is there anyone else that you'd like to invite?"

"I'd like to extend the invitation to Morelli. I don't know if he'd come, but it would mean a lot to me to have him there. I'd like to invite Ella and Luis, as they are almost family, and Rachel and Ron. You have a good relationship with them, and they are friends of yours. Besides, it might be nice for Julie to have her mother and stepfather there when her father is marrying someone as well. It would be nice for her to see the two sets of parents getting along together."

"I asked her when she was here at Thanksgiving whether it would be okay for me to marry you."

"What did she say?"

"She said she liked you and wondered if, in the event that we did marry, she would be allowed to come more frequently to visit."

"You did say yes, didn't you?"

He nodded. "Actually, what I told her was that I didn't know that she wanted to visit more frequently and, now that I did know, I would try to make sure that we saw each other more frequently than we did."

"What did she say?"

"She said that she loved her mother and her stepfather, but that she loved me as well and she'd like to get to know me better. She said that anyone who was willing to take a bullet for her was a good person to get to know." When Julie had been kidnapped, the kidnapper took Julie and me back to my apartment. He restrained me so that I couldn't help at all, but he didn't count on Julie. Ranger walked into my apartment knowing that he would get shot but also knowing that it was the only way to save Julie and me. The kidnapper shot Ranger twice, and Julie shot the kidnapper. It was an upsetting time, and Julie had needed to go through therapy to help her deal with the resulting fallout. However, it had seemed to make an impression on her. She had been far more involved and had wanted to develop a relationship with Ranger ever since. He was such an extraordinary person that it was nice to see.

"I also told her about the pregnancy. I asked her to keep it a secret."

"She's a special kid. When we dropped her off at the airport, she had thanked me for making you happy."

"I had wondered what she had said. She seemed to be whispering something to you, but I wanted to respect your relationship with Julie and didn't ask."

"I wouldn't have minded you asking. Do you think we could have her for a couple of days over the Christmas holidays? We are having that dinner for your family here on the Monday after Christmas. That's five days after the holiday this year. Do you think that would be a good time to have Julie? I know her cousins like seeing her."

"It's something we can certainly talk to Rachel about."

"The baby is due at the end of June. Perhaps we should think about having Julie up for a week or so after the baby is born so that she can meet her new stepbrother or stepsister."

"That's something else we can talk about."

We heard the locks tumble on the door, and Ranger got to his feet and met Ella as she was walking in with a tray of food. "She said yes", he said with a smile.

Ella grinned. "Let's see the ring", she said. Ranger took the tray from her as she walked over to me, and I proudly held up my ring so that she could inspect it. "That's gorgeous", she said. "I'm not surprised that Ranger would pick such a nice ring."

"That's true", I said. "Ranger has excellent taste."

"This is going to be a secret engagement", said Ranger, "and it will be followed by a secret wedding. In fact, we are technically going to have a commitment ceremony instead of a marriage simply because we don't want a marriage between the two of us recorded. However, it would mean a lot to us if you and Luis were able to come to the ceremony."

Ella grinned again. "You have made me very happy", she said. "Wait until I tell Luis."

"Just remember, I don't want anyone else in the company to know. I'll tell Tank tomorrow, but that is it."

Ella smiled. "A marriage and a baby? Your life has changed dramatically in the last year", she said as she patted Ranger on the cheek. "I'm happy for you. Your happiness has been a long time in coming."

"Thanks, Ella", said Ranger. "I'm just grateful that Steph is in my life now."

"I'll let you get on with your celebration dinner", said Ella. She turned to me. "In case you didn't notice, I put some ginger ale in the fridge. If you leave the cap off overnight, it should be flat tomorrow morning and would be a change from peppermint tea first thing. It might sit better and settle your stomach better. Ranger said that the tea and the scones haven't been sitting well."

"But by about lunch that is all I want."

Ella smiled. "That's why I always make sure there are some in the break room."

I laughed. "I have both noticed and appreciated it." I stood up and gave her a hug, and Ranger gave her a hug afterwards. "Thanks, Ella", I said.

"Yes, thanks for your help in putting together everything for this dinner", said Ranger.

Ella smiled again. "Nothing made me happier", she said.


	6. Chapter 6

_I am trying to cheer myself up, so I'm posting an extra chapter. Sometimes life gets to be a bit much, and my ability to cope has now officially been exceeded. My husband always says you are either under the wheel or on top of it, and I'll be glad when I am through this cycle and am on top of the wheel again! By hey – it's Friday and the weather is supposed to be nice all weekend. Maybe life isn't so bad after all. _

_Hope you enjoy the extra chapter,_

_Sarah_

Ranger turned his alarm off the next morning before it had even beeped. As he got out of the bed, I hung on to him. "Go back to sleep, babe", he said softly. "You can eat while I have my shower, and then I can eat while you have yours." I closed my eyes and drifted while he got dressed in his workout gear, and I dozed after he left for the gym. But as I lay there, I battled nausea. It was the first time I had felt sick before I had gotten up, and I didn't like the change.

I pulled myself to a standing position, waited while the whirlies disappeared, and walked into the kitchen. I removed the flat bottle of ginger ale and slowly sipped it. While it didn't exactly settle my stomach, it didn't upset it either and I took that to be a good thing. Ella had also left a bag of pretzels on the counter, and I opened the bag and ate a few. Since those also seemed to be sitting well, I ate a few more before heading into the bathroom. I took a nice long hot shower and walked out of the bathroom at the same time as Ranger entered the apartment. "Did you have a good workout?" I asked.

"Yes", said Ranger. "Did you try some breakfast?"

"I think I'm giving up on breakfast. Ella left me pretzels, and I ate a handful of those and they stayed down. The flat ginger ale is staying down as well. I don't think I want to test anything else today."

"Ella left you another raisin scone."

"I'll take it with me to my office and eat it later."

"Okay", he said. He kissed me on my nose as he passed by me and walked into the bathroom. As he jumped into the shower, I dressed in a Rangeman uniform. Like the men in the company, my Rangeman uniform consisted of black fatigues, a black long-sleeved t-shirt with the Rangeman logo embroidered down the sleeve, and in a nod to the cold outside, a black hoody with the Rangeman logo embroidered across the chest. Unlike the men in the company, I was allowed to wear leggings and yoga pants instead of the fatigues. Of course, seeing leggings and yoga pants on the Rangeman men might be pretty funny, and I had a brief vision of Hector, with his bulky muscles and teardrop tattoos, wearing leggings. This vision made me laugh.

So although I had a few pairs of fatigues, I was allowed to wear leggings and yoga pants and I generally preferred to wear the softer materials. This morning was no exception. My continuing stomach upset meant that I preferred to wear those materials that were more forgiving, more comfortable, than clothes with a structured waistband.

I re-entered the bathroom and sat on the closed toilet seat while Ranger filled a sink of hot water and lathered up his shaving brush with soap. He spread the foam on his face and proceeded to scrape off his whiskers.

I liked watching Ranger shave in the morning. It seemed like such a civilized way to start the day. With using a manual razor, it was quiet and relaxed. The soap smelled good and I loved watching the interplay of emotions on Ranger's face as he ran the safety blades over his skin. Ranger was a very guarded person. I think I saw the real person underneath the cool exterior more than most, but even with me he hid a lot of his emotions behind a screen, and I had to be very observant to pick up on his little tells. The tightness of his eyes when he wasn't happy. The slightly stronger grip of his hand when he was angry. The dilation of his pupils when he was aroused. The twitch of his lips and softening of his face when he was amused. However, when he shaved was the one time that he didn't hide his thoughts and feelings from the world.

Today he looked happy. His face was light and there was a quirk to his lips that showed that he was thinking of something good. He finished shaving and washed off the remaining bits of foam, then let out the water from the sink and rinsed the sink clean.

"What were you thinking about?" I said as his lips quirked up and his eyes looked like they were smiling.

"As I started to shave, the light caught your ring and the diamond winked at me, and I realized again that you said yes", he said. He spread on some shea aftershave balm. "You have made me incredibly happy."

I smiled. "Good. Then you know how I feel", I said. I kissed his pecs, and wasn't that giving me ideas?

Ranger smiled. "Not this morning, babe. I have to get ready for a meeting at nine with a new client. I have redesigned their security system and will soon have another hundred or so employees for you to research."

"I swear that you are finding people for me to research so that I am too busy to go out skip tracing right now", I said.

Ranger laughed. "No, this is more like the proverbial rolling stone."

"That it doesn't have time to grow moss?"

"No. Now that it's rolling down the hill, it's rolling faster and faster and is showing no signs of stopping."

"That's good for the company."

"I was thinking of hiring another Vice-President and making Tank's title Vice-President of Operations rather than Operations Manager. The new Vice-President would be in charge of administrative and support services. I'm just having too much of a problem doing it all."

"Do you have someone in mind?"

"I was thinking of promoting Nate up, and hiring another lawyer to take Nate's position. I think having a former JAG lawyer would be a good person to promote into the role. We could use his legal expertise when running the administrative functions, and I like the idea that we are promoting from within. Besides, he's a good person to have on staff and, now that he is finished earning his MBA, I think he will be looking for a job with more teeth than what he currently has. I don't want to lose him."

"That sounds like a good idea." I paused, thinking, and Ranger looked at me.

"Babe?"

"I was just thinking that, if I am planning on skip tracing again after the baby is born and we continue to be so busy on the research desk, maybe it would be a good idea for us to consider hiring another researcher part-time. We don't have to if there isn't enough money in the budget, but I'm just a bit worried with the research coming in from the TPD and the research setting up new clients and the research required to create capture plans for skips and the research for ongoing clients mixed with the marketing research done for Sales that we won't be able to get it done in a timely fashion. I know I found it incredibly helpful having Miguel helping out, and to keep up I could use him part-time constantly. I feel like I am perpetually behind currently."

"I'll talk to Miguel and see if he would mind doing research every morning and patrol every afternoon, instead of doing patrol and monitoring. He might not mind it so much if he was still doing patrol for part of the day."

"It's worth a try. The nice part about Miguel is that, if we get incredibly busy again, we can take him off patrol and have him help exclusively on research. The other nice thing is that I don't have to train him. He said that although he still doesn't like research, he found it better when he could analyze the material much like I found it easier as well. It makes it more unlikely that I will fall asleep."

"That's true. I haven't caught you sleeping for a long time." Ranger's eyes lightened in amusement. "Probably for a couple of months now."

I laughed. "Just because you haven't caught me doesn't mean that I've been staying awake. The good news, however, is that I don't count my sleeping hours on my time sheet."

Ranger thought about smiling. "You already work a lot of hours. You average sixty hours a week with another ten for training. I can't imagine what it would be if you included your napping time."

I groaned. "Much, much more."

Ranger laughed. "I was planning on telling Tank today about his promotion into Vice-President, and run by him the promotion of Nate. So my executive team would be Bob, as Chief Financial Officer, Nate, as Vice-President of Administration, Tank, as Vice-President of Operations, and me. I was also planning on telling Tank about our engagement and the baby. Are you okay with that?"

"I am. Do you mind if I tell Morelli about the engagement?"

"Not a problem. Just ask him to keep it quiet." He finished getting dressed and gave me another hug and kiss.

"I will."

As Ranger walked out to the kitchen and ate his breakfast, I put on my makeup for the day and strapped on my gun. When I first started working for Ranger, I had conveniently 'forgot' to wear my gun every day, and Ranger frequently had to send me back into the apartment to retrieve it. I then progressed to wearing it every day just like Ranger wanted, but I didn't keep it loaded. Ranger said that was more dangerous than not wearing it at all, as some people would shoot an armed person even though they would never shoot an unarmed person. I told him that it was less dangerous as there was less of a chance of a skip shooting me with my own gun. There had been times, luckily not many, when a skip had stolen my gun from me and threatened me with it. Although it had only happened six or seven times, I had found that it was much better for me to know that the gun wasn't loaded when that happened. Ranger didn't think much of that theory, so I had taken to having the gun loaded while in Rangeman but having the gun empty when out in the field. Ranger didn't like that scenario any better. Now, a few months later, I had progressed to keeping my gun loaded at all times and, now that I wasn't scared of guns quite the same as I was, I didn't mind it as much. I was pretty ambivalent about it now and didn't care whether the gun was loaded or not. Ranger, however, was reassured that it was there and ready to use if I ever needed it.

I walked out of the bedroom as Ranger put his empty plates on the tray for Ella to take back to the kitchen. "Hey", I said, "I just had a thought. When the residences move into the new tower, you will reconfigure the offices so that the first floor is reception and conference rooms, second is Sales and Purchasing, the third floor is the Finance and Legal and IT departments, with I would assume the offices for Nate and Bob, and the fourth floor will be Operations, but the geekier Operations staff." Ranger smiled. "What? You have to admit, Research and Cybersecurity are the geekier branches of the Operations department. My point is that Cybersecurity, IT, Finance, Legal, Sales and Purchasing staff all don't wear guns. This should mean that I shouldn't need to wear a gun either."

Ranger laughed. "You are always thinking of an angle."

"I can understand why you want your Operations staff all wearing guns. Those who are out on patrol all need to be ready for whatever is thrown at them. Those capturing skips need to wear guns as well. Those working Reception need to wear guns, as do the offsite security guards. However, those doing research don't need to wear a gun. It is not important or useful in our jobs."

"You'll still be part of the Operations team."

"I know, but as with the Cybersecurity department, wearing a gun has no useful function. Could we compromise so that I wear a gun when I go out skip tracing and I practice religiously, but not have to wear the gun in Rangeman?"

"You drive a hard bargain", he said. He was thinking about smiling, so I thought I had a chance at getting my way. "I'll think about it."

I tiptoed up and kissed him. "Thanks. I don't hate it as much as I did, but I can't imagine being eight months pregnant and wearing a gun holster. It somehow seems wrong."


	7. Chapter 7

I pulled up the details on the three files that Connie had sent over the day before. The first was a man, Arnold Seymour, who had been committing fraud. He had gone door-to-door asking people for money for his charity. What he didn't tell them was that he was the charity and all money that was raised went directly into his wallet. I hoped for his sake that his middle name didn't start with an 'S' so that his initials weren't ASS, but then I thought it might be appropriate if it did.

The second was Joshua Brown. Answered to Joss, apparently. I thought that was a little odd. Joss seemed like a very feminine name compared to Joshua, and I decided that, if we had a boy, I would never name him Joss. He was wanted for house theft. In amongst the things that he stole was an urn containing dog ashes. He thought it was cocaine and snorted the majority of the evidence before they arrested him. He said it was the best high that he'd ever had. He said that it had given him energy and, whenever he snorted the ashes, he would go out for a run. I wondered if he chased his tail as well.

The third file was for Justine Lu. She was wanted for dismembering her husband. She apparently had gotten angry at him when she found out that he had been having an affair, and she chopped off his penis. However, she then called the paramedics, thereby saving her husband from death. She had been charged by the police but her husband was arguing that his wife shouldn't have been charged. He said that he deserved it. Personally, I don't think anyone would deserve dismemberment, which is why I didn't dismember Dickie – even though I wanted to.

I finished researching the files as Tank came into my office and shut the door. He had a big smile on his face. "Congratulations", he said. "Let's see the ring."

I grinned and held out my hand. Tank inspected it and grinned again. "That's beautiful, Steph", he said. He sat down on the guest chair. "Ranger told me about the baby. Apparently the congratulations are for more than just the engagement."

I smiled. "It still hasn't sunk in yet."

"How are you feeling?"

"I've been better. Mornings are especially hard for me, but I'm getting through them. Afternoons are much easier."

"That's good. I talked to Ranger. We've decided that you don't have to wear a gun any longer. It would be hard with maternity wear being so loose anyway."

I laughed. "There has to be something good in everything."

Tank suddenly looked serious. "Are you not happy about the baby?"

"Ranger is slowly eroding away my concerns. At first I was desperately unhappy. It wasn't something we planned. I don't want to stop skip tracing, but Ranger says that once the baby is born he would support me in picking up skips again. I was worried about bringing the baby into an uncommitted relationship, but now we're engaged. I was worried about having the space for a baby since our apartment is a one-bedroom, but in the new tower Ranger is building a bigger apartment. The only concern left is the fact that I don't actually like babies. I don't get the warm fuzzies from them. I've never wanted kids. I'm happy with Rex. I love my nieces and nephew because they are my sister's rather than because they are kids, and I like the older ones because they are developing their own personalities and I like them for whom they are becoming. I'm not certain that I will be a good mother because of that."

"Steph, you have more love and caring in your little finger than most people have in their whole body. Yes, you might not get all ga-ga over babies, but that doesn't mean that you won't be a good mother. I think you will love your babies just as much as you love Rex, not because they are babies but because they are yours and Ranger's. You are a protective person who will work to ensure that your babies are safe and are loved. I have no doubts that you'll be a great mother."

"I don't want to change my lifestyle."

"I know you have to while you are pregnant, and to tell you the truth that only does good things for Rangeman, but do you have to change your lifestyle after you have the baby? If you have a good nanny hired, I think you can have it all."

A wave of overwhelming anxiety washed over me and tears came to my eyes. "Shit", I said as I dabbed them with a tissue. "How will we ever find one good enough for our baby?"

"See? Right there. That thought reinforces my feeling that you'll be a good mother. You are already worrying about the baby's welfare, and he or she hasn't been born yet."

I smiled slowly. "Thanks, Tank. I needed that." Tank stood and walked to the door. "Before you go", I said, "I have three files for the patrol staff to capture. I'll send the files to your email."

"That's great. The patrol staff is incredibly happy that you are doing research and handing over the skips to capture. They have been enjoying the variety in their workdays, and I've had to make sure that I spread out the work so that no one person gets their turn too often. They will be happy having more people to capture. When are you telling the rest of the staff your news?"

"We're planning on waiting the three months before we tell people, so we have another three weeks to go. That gets us over the period when it is more likely to have miscarriages, as well as giving us time to acclimatize ourselves to the idea."

"I can see that you need that time, but I don't think Ranger needs more time. He was incredibly happy when I left him a few minutes ago, and I don't think I have ever heard someone as proud as he was when he told me that you were engaged or that you were expecting."

That was something to think about.

"You know what the only bad thing about this is?" said Tank.

"What's that?"

"That your car pools are largely useless now." I'd had so many car incapacitations and deaths that the Rangeman staff had started a pool. For the price of ten dollars a guess, people could select the day that they thought my next car emergency would happen. Since it wasn't unheard of for me to have two car emergencies in the same day, people also had to select the time of the emergency as well. The winner won the pool of money.

I smiled. "That's true, but that also means that people can place bets on when the baby will be born and whether it will be a boy or a girl. You can even place bets on names. There is a whole area of betting that is opening up."

"Thank God", said Tank. "Life would otherwise be boring without the ability to bet on things. This staff will have a good time with this."

I smiled. "Glad to be of service."

Tank opened the door. Morelli was on the other side. "Were you waiting to talk to Steph or to me?"

"Steph asked me to come in for a moment. I have a research request for her as well."

"Then I'll leave you to it." Tank turned to me. "See you later."

He left the office and Morelli entered. "Would you shut the door?" I said.

Morelli did, and smiled at me. "The last time you asked me to shut the door you told me you were pregnant. What is the big news this time?"

I held out my hand, and Joe inspected the ring. He smiled. "That's beautiful, just like you."

"Thanks, Joe."

"Do you feel more settled about having the baby now?"

"Yes. We talked about the potential of me continuing to capture skips after I have the baby, and Ranger said that he would leave it up to me. He said that he'd prefer if I don't go after the violent ones, but that's not because I'd be his wife or the mother of his kids. He said that's because he cares about me and doesn't want to take the chance that I'll get hurt. He's pretty well demolished all of my concerns except for the worry that I won't be a good mother."

"I think that's what everyone worries about when they first get pregnant or, at least, that's what they worry about if they will be good parents. If they don't care about being a good parent, then they probably won't be. You care. I have no doubt that you'll be a good parent."

"That's basically what Tank just said as well."

"He's right."

"Just so that you know, this is a secret engagement. We aren't actually getting married. We are planning on having a commitment ceremony rather than a marriage ceremony."

"What's that?"

"It's exactly like a traditional marriage ceremony, except that we won't register the marriage with the government. Ranger is concerned about the potential of people targeting me if they know that there is a formal tie between the two of us. That's one of the reasons that we are keeping my apartment, and is why I won't be changing my name."

"Ranger is involved in more than simple skip tracing, isn't he?"

"That's a question you should ask Ranger."

"Do you know everything he's involved in?"

"Yes."

"Are you in danger?"

"No, mainly because Ranger protects his own and he worries about everyone he cares for. He's always been overprotective of me and takes radical steps to try to protect me." Joe nodded. He was one of the few people who knew that Ranger tracked me through my watch and car, and Ranger's overreaching concern about privacy.

"When are you planning on tying the knot?"

"We're thinking February when Julie is on school holidays. I won't be huge at that point, but I should be over the morning sickness. We are inviting only close family, you, Tank, Ella and Luis, and Rachel and Ron. Rachel and Ron are Julie's parents and Ranger gets along with them well. I'm not inviting Connie or Lula or Mary Lou. I'm not inviting my aunts and uncles and cousins. In fact, I'm not planning on telling any of those people but, if they ask, we intend to tell them that we're going to elope. We're planning on holding a party for everyone when the construction of the new building is completed, and the official reason will be a housewarming party of sorts. By that time, the baby will be born, so we'll be celebrating that as well."

"You'll be moving into the new tower, won't you?" I nodded. "Do you think that you'll miss the option of living in a house?"

"Instead of an apartment?"

"Yes. Won't it be hard to teach your child how to ride a bike or to throw a ball?"

"They have these things called elevators", I said with a smile.

Joe laughed.

"Besides that", I said, "there will be a very large belvedere that will be the size of your backyard which we'll be able to use for teaching the basics."

Joe smiled. "And the baby can always come over to Uncle Joe's and ride his or her bike along the sidewalk there as well."

I laughed. "There is that", I said. I stretched. "Did you get a chance to get a coffee?"

"This was actually going to be a quick visit. I have a list of thirty names that I was hoping you'd be able to run. This is for the case where we have someone stealing ashes from the crematorium. They have stolen five bodies. I have checked the police database, and each of the names has come up clean. The Chief wants this one tied up as soon as possible. It's a clusterfuck waiting to happen, and the Chief doesn't want to take the chance that it blows up in his face. So far, we've been able to keep it from the media, but I don't think that it will be long before it gets out."

"Okay. I'll put a rush on it. Give me a couple of days and I should get some answers to you."

"That's great, thanks. How many hours do you think it will take?"

"Thirty names? About fifteen hours. It takes about half an hour per name on average."

"Even if you can siphon the information through as you get it, that would be good", said Joe. "The soonest we can have the information, the better off we'll be."

"I'll do the best I can."

"Thanks, cupcake. Do you think that Ranger is in his office? I looked for him yesterday, but he was out."

"I don't know. I know that he was planning on being in the office today, but I don't know where he is."

Joe smiled. "I'll see if he's available. I want to pass on my congratulations."

"He'd like that." I stood up and led Morelli down to Ranger's office. He looked up, then asked Nate for the room for a moment and suggested that he get a coffee. Nate smiled at us as he passed, and Morelli and I went into Ranger's office and shut the door.

"I just wanted to say congratulations", said Joe as he walked over to Ranger's desk and shook his hand. "I hear that congratulations for two things are in order."

Ranger grinned. "Thanks. I can't speak on behalf of Stephanie, but I am incredibly happy. I can't seem to stop smiling. My staff keeps asking me what is going on."

"What do you say?" I said with a smile.

"I keep telling them that I've been reorganizing staff, and I think there are good changes ahead of us."

"Are you reorganizing staff?" said Morelli.

"We are", said Ranger. "I work too many hours per week, and I need to offload some of my responsibilities. I'm doing a huge shakeup so that when the baby is born I will have time to spend with him or her, and so that Steph and I together can be better parents." He paused. "Did Steph explain that this is a secret engagement?" he said.

"She did. Are you planning on telling your families?"

"Yes, we are, but we are also going to tell them that it's a secret engagement as well."

"It will drive Grandma nuts", I said with a grin. My grandmother was insatiably curious, and there was nothing she liked better than being able to share a particularly juicy piece of gossip. If she didn't know of any gossip, it was quite common for her to make something up. Since I had been the focus of a lot of her pieces of gossip, I didn't like that personal characteristic of hers. She had embellished tidbits of gossip until I was a mass murderer who ate babies, or until I had been wearing a bomb vest and had exploded a car…unfortunately, that last one had happened and she didn't need to embellish it much. However, my grandmother embellished stories a lot, and my stories had no need to be embellished. They were shocking enough on their own, just the way they were.


	8. Chapter 8

I sat back in the chair as I sipped on my tea, and I nibbled on the raisin scone that I had saved from breakfast that morning. By the time I had finished consuming the scone, Joe had sent me the list of names. I don't think that was a reflection of how fast he was at getting the names to me but rather a reflection of how slowly I had to eat the scone to keep it down.

I had time to investigate four of the names before Ranger came into my office to ask me whether I would be available for lunch. I smiled at him. "For you? Always."

Ranger looked at me, his eyes soft. "I was thinking we could eat in my office. I have to finalize our apartment design for my meeting this afternoon, and now that you've had another chance to think about it overnight, I wanted you to take a last look at it to see if there is anything else that you can think of that needs to be done."

I smiled and followed Ranger to the break room. He put on the kettle to make me another cup of tea as I selected another scone and some cheese and a fruit salad. I grabbed a carton of milk, thought about it and then, because a cold carton of milk sounded very good, I grabbed another.

Ranger made me my cup of tea before taking some minestrone soup and some crackers. He added a container of cut vegetables and dip, and a container of cheese and crackers. I looked at him as he lifted his food and my cup of tea, and carried it down to his office.

We walked inside and he closed the door. "How did it go with Morelli?"

"Well. He is very happy for us and seemed to be honored that we wanted him at the wedding. I explained to him that he was probably my closest friend, not including you, and that he was your friend as well and we both would like to have him there."

"He seemed to be taking it well when I saw him, so I hoped that it had been positive when you told him."

"He was honestly happy for us. He just said that he was a bit envious, because we have what he wants. But he wasn't jealous. He just hopes for the same thing for himself."

"I can understand that. I've met people in my life that I was envious of as well. Doesn't mean that I didn't wish them well, but I was envious. It was, in fact, the main reason I didn't like him much when you were going out with him. That envy clouded my judgment. Did I hear correctly that he brought work?"

"Someone is stealing cremated remains and the crematorium is substituting dead dogs in their stead. So you might thing that you are burying old Aunt Agnes, but instead you are burying old Rover Grover. It's a huge problem that so far hasn't been picked up by the media. Joe knows that it's only a matter of time, and he wants the investigation well underway before the media finds out what is going on."

"Rover Grover?"

"It was the name of our neighbor's dog when I was growing up. It sounds like the name of a big dog. In fact, however, it was the name of a Chihuahua. They had asked their daughter what they should name the dog and, since her favorite show at the time was Sesame Street and, since her favorite character was Grover, that's how the dog got her name."

"Rover Grover was a female dog?" said Ranger. He had stopped eating to listen to my story.

"It was an unfortunate name all around", I said.

Ranger thought about smiling.

"She had wanted to call it 'Come' because of the number of times that you had to call her to come, but her parents thought it would give the wrong idea."

"It would certainly be confusing to tell it to stay. 'Stay, Come' would be hard for the dog to understand."

"That's true, but now that I'm an adult I know that it was for the sexual nature that they were disenchanted with the idea." I paused as he laughed. "How did your morning go?" I asked.

"Good. The meeting with the new client was successful and he signed his contract with us. He will get the employee names to us by the end of the week. After I met with him, I met with Tank. He agreed to the promotion as Vice-President. I went over all my plans for the company and he thought they made sense. So, then I called in Nate. He agreed to the promotion to Vice-President as well. I will send out a notice to all staff this afternoon. I have a meeting with the two of them and the Chief Financial Officer this afternoon at two to talk about the staffing changes and the company reorganization. This is an exciting day."

"Tank seemed pretty happy. I didn't want to congratulate him at that point, though, as I didn't know if you had talked to him yet."

"I had, but I think it would be better for you to wait until the all-staff bulletin goes out. I have a meeting at eleven-thirty tomorrow morning with the Chief Financial Officer and the bank to arrange the mortgage for the new tower."

"You're sure you will be able to afford it?" I said.

Ranger smiled. "Someday I'll have to show you our balance sheet. Are you sure you don't mind loaning the company your money? We'll pay the going rate that we would have to pay at the bank. I'm not sure yet what that rate will be." He named a rate that it would approximately be, and it was much more than I would be able to earn in my own investments. And it was guaranteed, which was a nice bonus. It was much safer than the stock market, especially since I didn't know anything about stocks and wasn't interested in learning.

"I would love to loan the company the money that I have", I said. "It makes me feel like I'm contributing to our common goals."

Ranger thought about smiling. "I like it when you say 'our common goals'", he said.

"Common goals, common goals, common goals", I said.

Ranger smiled. "I was thinking that we could start from scratch and leave all the things that we have in the apartment currently. That way we can pick our own things. My intention is to leave the apartment as a guest suite for potential visitors."

"That will be a nice suite for a guest to use."

"We periodically get visiting dignitaries or celebrities who don't really want to use a hotel but a safe house isn't luxurious enough for them. They aren't in protection, but we want to place them somewhere safe. We'll section off the living room so that there are another couple of bedrooms. This will make it a two-bedroom suite with an additional bedroom for a bodyguard."

"Hotel Rangeman?" Ranger gave a half-smile. "I like the things in your apartment now."

Ranger smiled. "Then we'll have to find the same things for our new place." He pulled over the architectural plans. "Do you want any changes to the plans?"

I looked them over again. "No. I think you and the architect have thought of everything."

"You played a big part too, babe. If it wasn't for your suggestions, we wouldn't have put in a sunroom or a belvedere."

"Have you run the floor plans for Tank's and Ella's apartments past them?"

"I have. Tank asked for a bigger closet, and Ella asked for a bigger kitchen."

I looked over the plans for the office refurbishment and reconfiguration. After the staff residences moved into the new tower, Ranger was planning on expanding the offices into the third and fourth floors – currently staff residences – and making Ella's and Luis's apartment on the sixth floor into a staff cafeteria and lounge, a place with a couple of pool tables and a large-screen television with a gaming system, and comfortable seating areas in addition to tables that people could eat at.

The plan was that Ella would go every day to her old apartment and would do all her cooking there. She would no longer deliver breakfast to Ranger's and my apartment. I would miss Ella's cheery good morning, but Ranger said that he'd personally like to spend more time in the kitchen anyway. I didn't miss cooking myself, but it did have some good aspects. As good as Ella's food was, I missed my peanut butter and olive sandwiches.

The break rooms on each of the floors would continue to offer snacks and drinks. However, Ella would no longer have to run up and down floors refilling the main course offerings as staff finished off the platters. She could go in, once, and deliver the snacks for the day. It would mean less running around for Ella, and that was a good thing. While she never complained, Ranger and I knew how busy she was.

I yawned. "Tired?" said Ranger softly.

"I am. I don't know why I'm so tired."

Ranger's lips quirked up. "I think that's because you are pregnant", he said.

"Yeah, I guess that's it."

"Why don't you have a nap for an hour, and do your research afterwards. You'll be more effective and will miss less."

"I guess." When I had finished my scone and fruit salad – I'm not sure why I took the cheese since my stomach was rocking and rolling with just the fruit and the scone – Ranger helped me to my feet and tugged me towards the elevator.

I cuddled into him as the elevator rose to the top floor. Ranger gave me a kiss on the top of my head. "Are you going to fall asleep on me again?" he said. A few months ago I had been working a lot of hours between working for Vinnie and working on the research desk, and I had fallen asleep standing up while leaning against Ranger. He'd had to carry me into the apartment and put me to bed.

"No", I said as I forced my eyes open. "I'm tired enough to, but I won't fall asleep until I get to bed."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Too bad. I liked carrying you."

I huffed out a laugh. "Pretty soon I'll be too big for you to carry."

Ranger smiled. "You'll never be too big", he said. "If I can carry Tank out of the rainforest, I can carry a little person like you, pregnant or not." When in the army, Tank had been captured and tortured, and Ranger's team had been tasked to retrieve him. The higher-ups said it couldn't be done. Ranger's team did it anyway.

I paused. "Did you have to carry Tank out?"

"Yeah", he said. "Tank was in pretty bad shape when we found him." Ranger didn't say anything more, but I could tell that the memory made him upset. There was the tightness around his eyes of him trying to contain his emotions.

"Were you friends before you rescued him?"

"No. I had never met him before, but the retreat from where he had been taken was about five days long. He didn't complain at all, despite being in pain, and my first impression of him was that he was a badass, and as tough as they come. I got to know him during our retreat, and I liked him more and more with every step we took. By the time we got to base, we had become friends. I visited him a lot as he was in the hospital, and talked to him a lot. He talked about his desire to get out of the army, and I talked about my desire to set up a security company. He supported me and I supported him, and we encouraged each other in our dreams. Without his encouragement, I don't know if I would have had enough confidence in myself to set up shop. Tank and I had settled in Newark at first and lived with my parents when we got out of the army, but I heard that Vinnie needed a bounty hunter. Tank and I decided to relocate and start skip tracing. We worked for Vinnie and Les Sebring for the first year, before branching out and starting Rangeman. The rest, as they say, is history."


	9. Chapter 9

Ranger kissed me awake an hour later, and I had to admit that he was right. I felt far more refreshed after my nap. I smiled at him as I more fully woke up, and he grinned at me. I hurriedly checked to make sure I didn't have drool or anything as equally as embarrassing on my face. When I found that my face was clean, I looked at him in question. "What are you smiling about?" I said.

Ranger's eyes were soft as he said, "you have sleep wrinkles on your face from the pillow and your hair is all mussed, and I had a sudden vision of you as a child…which made me think of our child, and that made me happy. Our child will be very cute."

"If our child looks anything like you, our child will be extremely good-looking as well", I said.

Ranger flushed. "I was thinking the same thing about you. Heaven help me if we have a girl and she looks like you."

"Why's that?"

"Because she'll be incredibly sexy and will get all the boys' attention."

"In that case, heaven help the boy she picks. He'll have a protective, badass father and fifty protective, badass uncles."

Ranger laughed. "Somehow, that makes me feel better. I can have staff follow them when they go out on a date to make sure that nothing untoward happens."

"Our little girl will figure it out."

"If she figures it out, my staff will have to go back to school to learn how to follow someone without being detected."

I laughed as I got out of bed and padded into the bathroom. Ranger called out that he had to go back to work as I used the facilities, and by the time I had put my unruly hair in a ponytail and had washed my face and reapplied my makeup, he had left for the afternoon.

I took the stairs down to the fifth floor. Ranger's door was shut, and I could only assume that he was in the meeting with Tank and Bob and Nate. I opened my office and walked in. Ranger had left a bag of pretzels on my desk, with a note that said, 'for our little secret to snack on.' I smiled. Ranger may not agree with eating junk food, but he would never stop me from eating it myself.

I made myself a cup of peppermint tea in the break room, and then returned to my office to start work for the afternoon. I worked on the files for Morelli for a few hours, but when I got to one the name stuck out to me as someone who deserved to be investigated further than In-Spect, our in-house search engine, could do. The file was for an Otis Brown. I knew it was a common last name, but it reminded me of Joss Brown, the person who stole the dog's ashes and got a high from them.

Since I didn't think that I believed in coincidences, I searched Otis's social media and found that he was the cousin of Joss Brown. I looked into both Otis and Joss, and by the end of it I knew I had the right person. When Joss had been arrested, there was an unknown person who had left prints in the house. Joss had said that he was working alone, but the homeowners had video monitoring on their house and there were obviously two people breaking in. Joss wouldn't hand over the person that had been with him when they broke in. I would be willing to bet that the person who had helped him was Otis.

Both Joss and Otis lived in the same house and, until recently, had lived with Joss's brother, Curtis. They went to high school together and had been described as Trenton's triple trouble. They had been arrested for drug use, and Joss had also been arrested for trafficking. Curtis had died three weeks after Joss had been arrested for the theft. I wondered if snorting dog remains was the cause. Then I wondered if he had developed fleas, but unless he was allergic to fleas I didn't think flea bites were the cause of his death.

Otis was a crematorium assistant. I didn't know exactly what that job entailed, but I thought it might involve knowing which bodies had come into the crematorium and which bodies had been cremated and were ready to send off to the funeral homes. I was willing to bet that the crematorium assistant had the keys to the building and had access to the room where the ashes were kept.

As I thought of that, I wondered what that room was called. After all, if the room where dead bodies were kept was called the morgue, I wondered what the room where the ashes were kept was called. Did they have doors on the rooms entitled 'enter' and 'exit'? 'Before' and 'after'? Was the incinerator located between the rooms, and the bodies passed through much like an industrial toaster?

I started to research crematoriums, and learned that bodies were taken to the crematorium in cardboard boxes. Apparently that was for health and safety reasons. I wondered if the cardboard boxes were stamped with 'return to sender' on them, and thought it was ironic that the ashes were a little of cardboard and a lot of Aunt Bobbie. I had never thought about it before and like most people, I would think, had assumed that the ashes were purely the body and nothing else.

I looked into Otis's and Joss's lives a bit more, but I knew I had the connection. I picked up the phone and called Morelli.

"Hey, tell me you have some good news", said Morelli. "The media just got wind of this story."

I smiled. "I have some great news."

Morelli brightened. "Yeah? What is it?"

"I have a skip right now that had been arrested for theft. When he and unknown robber broke into a house, they stole the cremated remains of a dog. He snorted the remains, thinking that they were cocaine. He said it was the best high that he had ever known. He is the cousin of one of the crematorium assistants that you sent to me. The two share a house. Until recently, they shared it with my skip's brother, but he died about three weeks after my skip was arrested. From everything I can see, the three were a tight unit. I think you have your connection."

"That's fabulous. Can you do a cursory search on the rest of the names so that we can find out whether there is another relative of Otis's working there as well?"

"I can. You just want me to just use In-Spect?"

"Yes. I just need to make sure that all my 'I's' are dotted and all my 'T's' are crossed. Only go into more detail if you think there is a connection there."

"That makes sense."

"I'll ask Otis for a sample of his fingerprints."

"That sounds like a good idea. I could be wrong, but I suspect that Otis is the unnamed robber that Joss stole the ashes with."

"I'm surprised that Otis didn't suspect that the 'cocaine' was in fact the ashes of a body."

"Apparently the ashes were stored in a decorative box rather than in a more traditional urn. Perhaps Joss had snorted some before Otis saw the contents of the box, and he reported the high before Otis had a chance to tell him what the contents were."

"So you think that Otis tried the ashes as well?"

"I wouldn't put it past him. On Otis's Facebook site he has a list of all the different drugs he has tried over the years. It's quite a list."

"Okay, I'll look into it."

"And I'll quickly review the other people on the list. I'll shoot over what I have so far. I went into detail on Otis and included the details that I had already brought up on Joss, and I think you might be able to use that information sooner rather than later."

"Thanks for the good news."

I smiled. "No problem." I hung up the phone and quickly sent over the files, and by the time I was finished Ranger was sticking his head into my office.

"I don't have time to train today. Will that be a problem?" he said.

"Are you kidding? Is it ever a problem?" I said with a laugh. "More seriously, I'm pretty jammed on researching today anyway. Morelli needs this research done quickly. The story is breaking on the evening news."

"Did you set up dinner at your parents' this evening? I have already asked your father, but I asked him to keep it quiet so I don't know if the rest of your family knows or not. That's what I was doing before dinner last night, while you were napping."

"If you asked my father to keep it quiet, then he probably has. My mother and grandmother said that they were making a pot roast for dinner tonight, so it should be good."

"Your mother is a good cook. I'm sure it will be."

I smiled. "They are expecting us around five-thirty, which gives us thirty minutes of leeway. If we aren't there by six at the latest, the post roast will be too dry and the vegetables too mushy. At least, according to my mother it will be. No one else will notice anything wrong with the food."

Ranger thought about smiling. "You sound like you speak from a well of personal experience."

I huffed out a laugh. "I have been the cause of many dry pot roasts in my time. I keep telling my mother to just go ahead and eat and I'll catch up when I get in, but apparently that is worse than dry pot roast."

"I'll be ready to go at five."


	10. Chapter 10

My apartment was located ten minutes away from anything important – the bonds office, the police station, Rangeman and my parents'. Rangeman was, however, the perfect location. It was five minutes from the police station, ten minutes from my apartment, and twenty minutes from my parents' on a normal day. With Ranger driving and in a pinch, we'd be able to get there in twelve. Since Ranger was a particularly punctual person, we didn't have to use his Indy skills that afternoon.

My parents lived in a small three-bedroom, one-bathroom duplex in an area of Trenton commonly known as the Burg. At one time, it was primarily filled with Italian immigrants. Now the area had branched out and become a multicultural melting pot, with residents all having one thing in common. They were all looking for a safe place to establish their lives, to dig down roots. Residents were characterized by a willingness to work hard and fueled by the desire to be the first to have the neighborhood gossip.

My grandmother, mother and father lived in my parents' house. Grandma had moved into my parents' home when my grandfather left to see if the grass really was greener on the other side – I guess it was because he didn't come back. With her youthful exuberance, Grandma was a trial to my mother in a way that my sister Valerie and I never were, and she's a pain in the keister to my father, who had never imagined living with his mother-in-law when he got married. Shortly after I moved out of the house, my father retired from his post office job and quickly discovered that he had three plausible options in front of him. First, he could have a heart attack from the stress of dealing with my grandmother all day long. Second, he could kill her, and third, he could get another job. While his favorite option was to kill Grandma, he also suspected that might be the option that was the most upsetting to my mother. So he did the next best thing and shortly after he retired he bought a taxi. He had enough regular fares that he was able to write off the car expenses on his taxes, and he spent the rest of his time at his social club spending all the money that he made driving a cab. He was a man who generally suffered in silence, although when Grandma said something particularly inflammatory you could often hear my father muttering to himself under his breath. I periodically wondered what he really felt, but then I thought that maybe I didn't want to know.

My mother was the glue that held the family together. If my family was a turkey dinner, my mother would be the turkey – without it there would be no turkey dinner. My grandmother would be the cranberry sauce, bright and sparkly and adding a punch of color and intense flavor to the dinner. My father would be the mashed potatoes, solid and substantial and an anchor to the family. My sister would be the gravy, since she had developed a fondness for it during each of her five pregnancies and used to drink it from a wine glass during each of those nine months. And me? I'd be the candied yam casserole, complete with baby marshmallows – something that should be dessert but was masquerading as a main dish and pretending it was healthy.

In an effort to get the juiciest piece of gossip, my grandmother regularly visited the Cut 'n Curl, the local salon and regular hot spot for gossip. Over manicures and pedicures, washes and sets, information was exchanged and lives dissected. By the end of a half-hour appointment, often stretched out to two hours by the time you had caught up on everything that was happening, you had taken a pretty good pulse of the neighborhood.

While my grandmother's favorite place to gather information was the salon, my mother's was Giovichinni's, our small local independently-owned deli/grocery store. What they didn't have in selection of grocery items they had in neighborhood gossip, and my mother went every day to get her fix. My grandmother appreciated that practice, as it allowed her to disseminate the news that she had found out at the Cut 'n Curl. In the competition of gossip, the first one to spread it was the winner – and my grandmother liked to win.

When we arrived at the house, my grandmother was standing at the door looking out. While she was happy to see us, I knew she wasn't standing at the door waiting to greet us. Instead, she was standing at the door to try to catch anything interesting that was happening on the street, and she would call out her observations to my mother at the back of the house as she saw them. This practice was acceptable when it was about the other people on the street. They couldn't hear her. It got a little embarrassing when she was reporting on the neighbor's habits though. Between my grandmother's loud voice and the proximity of my parents' house to the other half of the duplex, our neighbor could hear every word that was said. It wasn't so bad when the neighbor was bringing home groceries, but it got a little embarrassing when Grandma spotted something that she shouldn't have seen, like when our neighbor was away and had a house sitter in, and the house sitter walked into the house with three prostitutes and five boxes of condoms. Since I knew the house sitter was only there for three days, I thought five boxes of condoms were ambitious. My grandmother wanted to go next door and offer to help work through all those boxes. She said that she'd like to experience the difference between the various options of ribbed and smooth, lubricated and not, and glow-in-the-dark and plain. Personally, I thought glow-in-the-dark was a bit redundant. If you couldn't find it in the dark, you had a problem. You shouldn't need a beacon.

We walked up to the house, and my grandmother grinned. "This is a nice surprise", she said. "We were glad you called today to ask if you could come for dinner. When we heard you would be visiting, we made a special trip out to Giovichinni's to get a pot roast big enough."

"I'm sorry", I said as I gave her a hug. "I didn't realize that you'd have to make a special trip. I thought you were always planning on having pot roast."

"We were, but your mother wanted a bigger pot roast. She said that she wanted to make sure that Ranger had enough to eat since he didn't eat dessert. He can't fill up the same with one less course of food at dinner."

"I'm sure it would have been fine", said Ranger.

"Well, we got a larger pot roast now, so I hope you're hungry."

We walked into the living room. My father was sitting on his chair watching television, where he normally was. I went over to him and gave him a hug and a kiss. "Thank you for giving your permission, Dad", I said quietly in his ear.

He kissed me on the cheek. "I like him. He's far better than Dickie ever was. I never liked Dickie."

I looked at him in shock. "I thought you had wanted me to marry Dickie?"

He snorted. "Your mother wanted you to marry Dickie. I thought he was a good-for-nothing schmuck."

"But you like Ranger better?"

"He may drive only foreign cars, but he otherwise has good taste. He takes care of you, and unlike Dickie he had the decency to ask me for your hand. I like him."

I gave my father another kiss. "Thanks, Dad."

"Let's see the rock."

I held out my hand and my father smiled as admired it. "Very pretty. Your grandmother will be envious. We'll have to hear about her desire to get married again."

I grinned. "I'm sorry."

My father harrumphed. "You don't look sorry."

"I'm too happy to look sorry."

A soft smile appeared on my father's face. "That's the way it's supposed to be, Steph."

"Did you want to come through for the reveal?"

My father laughed. "I'll listen from here. I always hate it when your mom and grandmother squeal at the same time."

I laughed, patted my father on his shoulder, and walked into the kitchen, where my grandmother was starting to mash the potatoes and my mother was making gravy. "What's happening at work?" said my grandmother as Ranger and I hugged and kissed my mother.

"Lots", I said. "Ranger is completely reworking the organizational chart for the company and getting ready to hire new staff. In addition, he has purchased the property next door to the Rangeman building and has been working with an architect to design the tower and the bridge joining the two. When the tower is built, all residences will be moving into the new tower and the tower that we are currently in will become solely for the business."

"That's great", said my mother. "It sounds like your company is growing fast, Ranger."

"It is. I'm amazed at how fast it has been growing."

"Who are your clients?" said my grandmother. "Would I know any of them?"

"I'm sorry", said Ranger. "That information is confidential. That is something we offer to our clients – extreme privacy. We don't talk about our client list or what we have done for them at all."

"I've asked Stephanie many times", said Grandma. "She won't tell me either."

"Stephanie has signed a confidentiality agreement. She's not allowed to talk about our clients. She could get sued otherwise."

"Yes, but you wouldn't sue her", said my grandmother. "You're her boyfriend."

My mother turned the gravy down to a simmer, and cut and plated the roast that had been standing on the cutting board. She took the bowl of vegetables out of the oven where it had been keeping warm and, as I took the mashed potatoes out to the table and Ranger took the bowl of vegetables and my grandmother took the roast, my mother decanted the gravy into the gravy boat and brought it out as well.

We all sat at the table, my father and mother at the head and foot of the table respectively, and my grandmother on one side of the table and Ranger and I on the other. I waited until the food had all be distributed and grace had been completed before I said, "I have a secret to share, but it has to stay a secret. No one, Grandma, absolutely no one outside the immediate family can know. So Val and Albert and the kids can know, but aunts and uncles and cousins can't know." Valerie and Albert were my sister and brother-in-law. "Can you keep this a secret?"

My grandmother sat forward in her chair, her nose vibrating in excitement, and not for the first time I thought that my grandmother was very similar in reactions to my hamster, Rex. Both were curious; both got excited easily. Luckily, that's where the similarity ended. I don't think I would like it if my grandmother made her bedroom a treasure trove of stored treats.

My grandmother nodded and my mother looked interested.

"I need to hear you say it", I said to my grandmother. "And when you say it, I need to see your hands to know that you aren't crossing your fingers at the same time."

Grandma looked disappointed, but she held up her hands and told me that she would keep it quiet. She looked at me expectantly.

I held out my left hand across the table into the space between my mother and my grandmother. My grandmother squealed and my mother started to cry. "This is wonderful, Steph", said my mother. "I'm so happy for you."

"That's beautiful", said my grandmother. "Are you the fiancé?" she said to Ranger.

Ranger smiled. "Yes."

"Thank God. I like you."

"You liked Morelli too", I said.

My grandmother smiled. "I didn't like Dickie though."

"That's a coincidence. After a while, neither did I", I said.

"Are you planning on starting a family?" asked my mother.

"Isn't this a little early to be talking about that?" I said. "After all, we just got engaged last night."

"Why did you want it to be a secret?" asked my grandmother.

"This will be a funny marriage", I said. "Because of Ranger's past, we don't want to have the public record associated with getting married. We don't want people to know for the same reason. It's that 'loose lips sink ships' mentality. However, it's important to us to say the words in front of God. Because of this, we will have a commitment ceremony instead of a marriage ceremony. This is the same as a marriage ceremony. It just doesn't include the signing of the register. However, while the state won't recognize that we are married, in the eyes of God we will be and that's what is important to us. I will retain my last name and will retain my apartment just to slow down or stop any links between me and Ranger. However, we do want that ceremony, and we do want to be married to each other."

"When are you planning on having the ceremony?" asked my mother. "Show your father your ring, Steph."

"Dad has already seen it. He saw it when we came in."

"You knew she was engaged and you didn't tell me?" my mother asked my father.

"Ranger asked for my permission yesterday", he said. "So, when they came in Steph told me that she'd accepted." He sounded proud of himself, and pleased that he'd had the latest gossip before either my grandmother or my mother.

"No wonder you were in such a good mood last night", she said with a shake of her head.

My father smiled.

"We are hoping to hold the ceremony at the end of February or early March", I said. "We are basically just inviting immediate family and a couple of very close friends to the ceremony. We plan on having it at Ranger's family's restaurant and shutting the restaurant down for the day. After the ceremony, we want to have a dinner for everyone at the restaurant. So it will be a private party. However, after the new tower is built, we hope to have a catered reception in the new staff lounge. That will probably be next fall or the spring afterwards. That will be the official opening of the new complex and although the guests won't know it, it will also be our official wedding reception. To that party, we'll invite all staff and a wider group of friends and family."

"What about presents?" said my grandmother. "If you don't let people know that you are getting married, how will people know that they should buy you a present?"

"Presents aren't necessary", I said. "I've never been comfortable with the concept that you need to get married so that you can raise money for your future. I know of people who have chosen to get married because they want to be registered for a china pattern or new household items. I never thought that was right."

"That's true", said my mother. "The most important thing is that you are getting married."

"So, babies will be soon?" said my grandmother.

"Who says we have to have babies?" I said.

"Isn't that why people get married?" said my grandmother. "After all, if you can live together without being married, why would you ever get married?"

"I don't know if I want a baby", I said.

My grandmother looked serene. "I didn't want them either, but look where we are now."

"Ma!" said my mother. "Are you telling me that you didn't want me?"

"Not at first, dear. I was having too much fun living footloose and fancy free, and I didn't want kids to tie me down. However, having children was the best accident that ever happened."

"I wasn't planned?" said my mother. Her eyes strayed to the whiskey glass and I could tell that she was disappointed that it was empty.

"Of course not", said my grandmother. "You were an accident. So was your brother, for that matter." My mother looked at my grandmother in horror as my grandmother calmly took another bite of pot roast. "This meat is particularly good tonight", she said as she ignored my mother. She looked up at everyone looking at her. "What? It _is_ good tonight."


	11. Chapter 11

"Did you hear on the news that there have been people who are being cremated but that, when the loved ones pick up the ashes, they are actually picking up the ashes of dead dogs? The cremated people have been disappearing", said my father.

My grandmother looked on in horror. "That's while I always say to have an open casket and get buried. It's important for people to see that the person is there, that they are whole in body."

"You prefer the ones that aren't whole in body", I said. "The more body parts taken off, the more gruesome it is, the more you like seeing the body."

"That's true, but at least with an open casket you can check that the body is the right body before it is being lowered into the ground. When a body goes to the crematorium, you can't check that old Uncle Henry is really Uncle Henry when he goes through the burner."

"I think it really was Uncle Henry", I said. "It's just that, when the ashes are removed, they are boxed up and at that point are stolen. The crematorium, not wanting to admit that they are having ashes stolen from their facility, are substituting the dead dogs in their stead."

"How many bodies have been stolen?" said my mother.

"Five, the last I heard", I said.

"Isn't that something", said my grandmother. "I always say, open casket and burial is the way to go."

"I don't know", I said. "I'd rather have a closed casket." My grandmother sucked in a breath. "Then, at the end of the service, I want the organist to play 'pop goes the weasel' over and over again just so that everyone watches the coffin waiting for something to happen." Ranger laughed and my father smiled, and I thought that I had just performed two miracles. My mother crossed herself. "Honestly", I said, "I'd prefer to be cremated. It's less impact upon the environment. I've heard that you can get a tree planted in your ashes, and that seems like the best idea of all. I'd like to have a tree planted in my honor. I'd like to be a spruce, I think. They never lose their needles, and those blue spruce are such a pretty color."

"It's all good until someone comes along and chops you down for a Christmas tree", said my father.

"Even then it is good, because you'd be bringing a family pleasure."

"I'd be a palm tree", said my grandmother. We all stared at her. "That is, if I was going to be cremated. I'd like to be a palm so that I would be planted somewhere warm."

"Did you know that, when you go into the incinerator at the crematorium, you go inside a cardboard box?" I said.

"What does it say?" asked my father. "Special delivery?"

"If it was Lettie Larson, it would say 'oversized package'", said my grandmother. Lettie was someone that my mother and grandmother went to church with, and she was about four hundred pounds and as wide as she was tall.

We finished up our meals. Ranger was learning how to eat with my family. When we ate, once grace was said it was like a starting whistle was sounded and people dug in. We talked, but we also ate quickly, eager to get to the star of the show – dessert. Ranger was a slower eater and took his time to enjoy the food. But then, he didn't have dessert to look forward to.

Now that he'd been at my parents' for dinner several times, he had gotten into the hang of eating there. He understood that the speed at which his knife and fork moved was important, and that if he had to stop talking to effect a faster pace, then he needed to stop talking. While I was an athlete eater and able to move my fork and knife quite quickly, Ranger was still wearing his training wheels. He had come a long way, but he still needed to perfect his speed. Just like he told me that I had to practice in shooting my gun, I told him that he had to practice eating faster. He didn't like his practice any more than I liked mine.

"Steph, I was thinking that I could do some sleuthing regarding the crematorium", said my grandmother as we started to clear the table in preparation for dessert. "The TPD could use my help, and it is always good to help the police."

"No", I said. "I don't want you doing any sleuthing on behalf of anyone."

"I could be a good sleuth", she said.

"I'm sure you could, Grandma, but Joe won't want you or anybody else near this case. He needs to tie this one up, all nice and tight."

"I could help."

"No, Grandma."

"There's a viewing on tonight that I was hoping to go to."

"We'll take you, Grandma", said Ranger. He looked at me and smiled at my surprise. "There's a viewing for the wife of an associate of mine", he said. "I'd like to go if I can."

"I'm not dressed for a viewing", I said. I was wearing a pair of black skinny dress pants and a pale blue long cashmere sweater.

"You look nice", said Ranger as his eyes went soft.

"You look real nice", said my grandmother. "I just need to change."

"After dessert", said my mother.

"You're letting Grandma have dessert again?" I said to my mother.

"Yes", she said. "This will be the first time she will have gone to the funeral home in a month, and the first time that she will have had dessert since we came for lunch at your apartment." The lunch had been a disaster. My grandmother had picked up Ranger's gun and shot Rex. He was luckily okay, but he was very upset by the event. My grandmother wasn't as shamed by the occurrence as I would have liked to have seen. I guess she wasn't as shamed as my mother would have liked to have seen either, as my mother cut my grandmother off dessert for the rest of the month and refused to let her go to the funeral home. For my grandmother, this punishment was akin to torture.

"I lost ten pounds in the last month", said my grandmother.

"Is that a good thing?" I said.

My grandmother smiled. "I just figure that I have room to regain a lot of weight again. I won't have to watch what I eat for a while."

"Speaking about weight", said my mother, "Val has started to lose weight again." Val recently delivered my only nephew. Edmund was now six weeks old. "Albert said that he would like to lose weight with Val. He said he put on ten sympathy pounds when Val was pregnant."

"That's just because she served gravy with every meal", I said, "and she poured it over her corn flakes in the morning instead of milk."

"I never saw anything like it", said my grandmother. "She sure liked gravy."

"Anyway, Albert has agreed to get the snip done, so that they won't have any more kids."

"That's good. If Val had more, she'd have to drive a school bus", I said. "Five kids, plus Val and Albert? Mixed with needing to fit in bulky car seats, they have a full car."

"That's true", said my grandmother. "And if she had more, it wouldn't be a short bus that she'd be driving."


	12. Chapter 12

My grandmother was a professional mourner who loved to go to funerals. She wouldn't even have to know the deceased. She loved the drama of the event, the gossip that was traded, and the cookies that were provided. When she went, she liked to go into all three of the slumber rooms to rate the display – the kind, size and material of the casket, the number of flower arrangements, the quality of makeup on the body. She got a little peeved, however, if the casket was closed and she wasn't able to rate the makeup job that was done. She liked to see people who looked so alive that you expected them to sit up and laugh at everyone for believing their prank. Since she insisted upon seeing the dead body, she would often pry the casket lid up. The funeral home had taken to nailing the lids closed in an effort to thwart her. My grandmother had responded by carrying a pry bar in her purse. Her theory was that, while it could and often was used to get the lids of the caskets open, it was also good as a weight in her purse so that she could bat it around to clear a path through the throngs of sympathetic wishers to the casket itself.

So while my grandmother was happy to be going to the funeral home that evening, the funeral home director wasn't as happy to see us walk in the door. I could clearly see him saying the words, "oh, shit." He pasted a smile on his face and walked over to us. "I haven't seen you for a while, Edna. How have you been?"

"I was grounded by my daughter", said my grandmother with a pout. "She cut me off dessert and coming here for the last month. It wasn't fair."

"Grandma, you shot my hamster", I said.

"But he was okay", said my grandmother. "Your mother hasn't heard the expression 'no harm, no foul' before."

"I'm sure it was all a mistake", said the funeral home director.

"It was", said my grandmother. "We would have had to have his body cremated, but then we might not get him back, I understand. Isn't that what I heard was happening to people recently? That dead dogs were being substituted for bodies?"

"I heard that as well", said the director. "You can be assured that nothing like that has happened to us. We'd notice the difference."

"How would you notice the difference?" asked my grandmother.

"Ashes are heavy. An adult's ashes weigh much more than a child's ashes, and I would assume that they would weigh much more than a dog's ashes. The funeral homes receiving the ashes on behalf of the executor should notice the difference. There is only one funeral home that has been missing various bodies. That funeral home is not us. We run a tight organization and would notice the difference. Are you changing your mind, Edna? Are you planning on getting cremated instead of buried?"

"Oh, no. I still want to be buried", she said. "I was asking for Stephanie. She said that it is never too soon to plan your funeral."

"That's true", said the funeral home director. "Come in and see me and we can do some end-of-life planning."

"Thank you. I already know a little of what I want. I'd like to donate my body to science." My grandmother sucked in a breath. "I like the idea that my body parts could be used by others to extend their lives."

"Don't do that", said my grandmother. "If doctors know that your body parts are to be harvested, they won't work very hard to save you."

"I don't think it works that way", I said. "The doctor is supposed to treat the person in front of them to the best of their abilities. They aren't supposed to kill off someone so that their body parts can be harvested." At least, that's what they say on the medical drama show I was watching a few days ago, and everyone knows that shows like that don't lie.

"I'll leave the two of you to discuss this between you", said the funeral director. His smile was a bit forced. "Come and see me when you have your plans finalized." He turned to Edna and wagged his finger at her. "We have had a very quiet month with you not here", he said. "Behave, and don't ruin our peace."

I looked in supplication at Ranger, and he must have read my request in my face. He turned to my grandmother. "Grandma, how about you come with me to my friend's viewing? No peeking in the casket."

I lay my hand upon the funeral director's arm to waylay him, and as my grandmother left I said quietly, "which viewings have closed caskets?"

The funeral director groaned. "All of them."

I sighed. "They won't be by the end of the evening."

The funeral director groaned again. "That's what I'm afraid of."


	13. Chapter 13

The funeral home was set up with three Slumber Rooms. Slumber Room One was at the front of the funeral home and was the largest and closest to the bathrooms and the cookies and beverages. This is the room that you wanted to be displayed in. It was for large families and popular people. It would not be the room that I was displayed in when I died. I doubted it would be the room that my grandmother was displayed in either. Ranger went to the front of the room and introduced my grandmother and me to his associate, Jerome Graves. My grandmother's hands started inching along the top of the casket as she tried to lift the lid. I grabbed her hand and yanked it back, and Ranger maneuvered my grandmother so that he was between her and the casket. My grandmother glared at him. He ignored her and continued to talk to Jerome.

"How do you know Ranger?" Jerome said to me.

"I'm the researcher on Ranger's team", I said. "How do you know Ranger?"

"I met him when we were in the army together. When I came back to the area, I invited him to lunch and was impressed by what his company does. I own the Ford dealership, and I started getting my company monitored by the Rangeman staff."

"You're the person who provides all those great cars!"

Jerome smiled.

"Steph drives one of your Explorers", said Ranger. "She said it's the nicest car that she has ever driven." I smiled. That wasn't saying much. My cars were usually the rejects from the used car lots, the cheapest vehicles that I could find that could get from A to B although, to be honest, not all of them could get from A to B either.

Jerome smiled. "The Explorer is a good vehicle. It's a very popular car to own. I'm surprised that Ranger hasn't gotten you a Lincoln Nautilus rather than an Explorer. It's a little more upscale, a little more luxurious than the Explorer. Don't get me wrong. The Explorer is a good vehicle – but the Nautilus is better."

"I don't know if Ranger wants me to have a more luxurious car. I have a tendency to demolish them." I grabbed my grandmother as she began to sidle up to the casket and linked my arm with hers. She tried to shrug me off, but I wouldn't let her go.

"Join the group. Ranger does have a tendency to have an unusual number of car explosions and other mishaps that happen to his fleet cars."

"Those mishaps all happen to me. No one else has any problems with their cars."

Jerome's face turned blank with shock. "They _all_ happened to you?" he said.

"The scary part is that, until recently, I had only driven Ranger's cars when my own were incapacitated for some reason. While I have exploded or otherwise incapacitated his cars about ten times, I have done it to my own cars about four times as often."

"And you're still allowed to drive a car?" said Jerome.

"She has had more car problems than I ever did when I was driving", said Grandma, "and they took away my license."

"That's because you told the police officers that you couldn't read the speed signs when you were going like a bat out of hell through a school zone. You should have just sucked it up and taken the ticket. Of course, you had a number of minor accidents to your name as well, and that's why Mom and Uncle Gerald are happy that you stopped driving."

"Well, the officers had no sense of imagination. They didn't believe me when I told them that I was being chased by aliens."

"Can you blame them?"

"I would have believed it", said my grandmother.

I shook my head and turned to Jerome. "I'm sorry for your loss."

"Thank you", he said. "Ask Ranger to give you a Lincoln. You'll like it much better than the Explorer."

I laughed and walked away.

Ranger led Grandma into Slumber Room Two. This was the room for those that were well-known but not particularly popular. I would probably be displayed in this room. Grandma didn't know the person who had died, nor did she know any of the mourners. We walked up to the front, and Grandma made a sound of disgust as she realized that the casket was closed again. Ranger stood on one side of Grandma again while I stood on the other, and when Grandma's hands started twitching we hustled her out of the room.

We then went into Slumber Room Three. This room was for the unpopular and unloved. Many of the people displayed there were very old and whose cronies had all already died. It was the smallest room out of the three and, perhaps more importantly, was the farthest away from the refreshment table and the washrooms. There was one grieving family member in the room, one flower arrangement displayed over the closed casket, and one picture placed on the top of it. It was a recent picture of the deceased, in which she was shrunken and wrinkled and sitting lopsided in her wheelchair with a blanket over her lap. At least, I hoped it was a recent picture.

Ranger and I again kept Grandma between the two of us, and when we wouldn't let her get her hands on the lid of the casket Grandma jerked free and tried to body check the coffin in a bid to knock it off its stand and smash onto the floor. Ranger caught her just before she reached the coffin, and he kept his arm around her waist and led her out of the room without expressing our sympathy to the grieving family member. I hastily gave our condolences and hurried after them.

My grandmother was pouting as Ranger and I led her to the doors of the funeral home. We grabbed some cookies to go and considered the visit a success. The funeral home director mouthed a thank you to me as we left and I grinned.

Ranger left to retrieve the car while Grandma and I waited on the funeral home's front steps. "Well, that was most disappointing", said my grandmother.

I smiled. "Not all was lost, Grandma", I said.

Grandma's lip was still sticking out, but she was looking at me with a beginning level of interest. "Why's that?" she said.

"Ranger kept you tucked into him the whole evening, and how often do you get to say that you walked arm in arm with the most handsome man in the home?"

My grandmother smiled. "There is that. I can work with that."

"What do you mean, work with that?" I said carefully.

"Do you think Ranger would mind if I told everyone that he propositioned me?"

I groaned.

When we dropped Grandma off, Ranger waited in the car while I walked Grandma to the door. My mother came out to thank us for taking her. "I haven't heard about anything going wrong when you were there yet", she said. When my grandmother did something outlandish, half of the Burg would call my mother to report the behavior. This would result in my mother ironing. A lot. Ironing was my mother's solution to any sort of upset in her life. The meditative effects from repeatedly running her iron around a piece of fabric soothed her emotions and calmed her mind. You could tell the severity of the problem by the number of laundry hampers full of ironing that were needed for my mother to achieve her Zen. Since I was usually the person who created the problem to start off with, I often was the one to bring my laundry to my mother to solve the problem. Now that I was living with Ranger, I didn't have any laundry to bring and had been known to pick up Valerie's laundry and bring it to my mother to do. Valerie was just as thankful as my mother.

Personally, I got no such benefits from ironing myself, and most commonly wore perma-press clothes so that I could avoid the activity. What little ironing I had Ella did for me.

"That's because nothing went wrong", I said. "She tried to body check one coffin, but Ranger caught her and almost carried her out of the funeral home. He hustled her out like he was bodyguarding her in the middle of a riot. She has a napkin of cookies, because after the attempted body checking Ranger wouldn't let her stay for the refreshments. She's sulking because they were all closed caskets and because Ranger wouldn't let her stay to gossip."

"Thank God", said my mother. "The two of you can take her any time."

I smiled. "Oh, no. I think once was enough."

I gave my mother a hug and a kiss, and got into the car again. As Ranger drove back to our apartment, he said, "that wasn't so bad."

"My grandmother intends to tell everyone you propositioned her."

Ranger groaned.

"Yeah, that was my reaction too."


	14. Chapter 14

Ranger and I decided to work a bit that evening before bed. I had those thirty crematorium employees to complete my searches on, while Ranger was still putting in place the new office organization and figuring out the different positions he had to hire for. He had worked with Bob earlier in the day regarding income and outgoing monies, and he worked with Nate and Bob to assign salaries to all the new positions. He had a meeting planned with the bank regarding the construction loan the next day as well that he wanted to prepare for.

I worked through six more crematorium employees, but none of them stuck out as being a good candidate for the theft of the ashes. I did, however, phone Morelli to tell him what the funeral home director said. "Hey", I said as he answered the phone.

"How are you?" he said.

"Good. I was at the funeral home with Grandma and Ranger this evening."

"And you're good?"

I laughed, but I could understand why he was asking. The last time he accompanied me to the funeral home with my grandmother, she had upended a flower arrangement onto the dead body, soaked the body and upset the relatives. It was when his makeup started dripping off his face that they really lost it. The time before that she fell onto the body as she tried to get closer to inspect the makeup job. Both times she said that she'd been pushed. Being pushed, in fact, was a common excuse for her.

"Ranger strong-armed her out of the funeral home before she was able to cause any problems."

"He's a better man than me."

"I don't know about that. He looked upon it as a bodyguarding exercise, I think. When Grandma tried to body check the casket, he hustled us out of the funeral home as though he was protecting an asset and bullets were flying." Joe laughed. "It was, I think, an eye-opening experience for him. I keep reminding him that Grandma is the genetic stock I come from, so he might as well get used to it. Luckily, that hasn't scared him off."

"You have a desire to see dead bodies at the funeral home?" said Morelli.

"No, but I'm not seventy. Give it a few years and maybe that's where I'll go to visit with my friends as well."

Joe laughed again. "Was there anyone good at the funeral home?" he said.

"Ranger had a friend there whose wife had passed away. I was really glad that Grandma didn't upend the flowers into her casket. It's bad enough when she does it to a stranger's casket, but when she does it to someone you know it is much, much worse."

"So Ranger survived."

"He did. And we survived showing the ring."

"How did that go over?"

"My grandmother asked if Ranger had given it to me."

"Oh, boy."

"My thoughts precisely. My mother wants us to come for dinner on Saturday and have a celebration dinner with Val and Albert and the kids. So we survived the first stage and now just have to survive the second." Morelli laughed. "When I was at the funeral home, however, the funeral home director made an interesting comment."

"Do I want to know?"

"Dad told us at the table the news about the crematorium as it was reported on the news. Grandma decided to do a little investigating." Morelli groaned. "She set up the questions with the funeral home director quite well actually. I am now supposed to be meeting him to discuss potential options for things that can be done when I die."

"Are you planning on doing that soon?"

"Not planning on it, no. But you never know what will happen. That's not why I'm calling though. I'm calling because the funeral home director said that the funeral home should have figured out that something was going on. He said all the bodies that had been stolen were from one funeral home in particular, and he said the cremated remains from an adult weigh a lot differently than the cremated remains for a child. Following that logic, he said the cremated remains for a dog would also feel different. I personally hadn't thought of that before, so I thought that I'd pass it on."

"Thanks. I never really thought of it before either. I knew the angle that they all came from the same funeral home, but since there are only three funeral homes in Trenton I thought it might be a coincidence."

"That would make sense, but it is worth checking into the funeral home's staff. Probably more worth it than checking further into the crematorium staff."

"If I send you the names tomorrow for the funeral home, can you search that for me? Please check into them before you finish the crematorium staff. Have you found any other potential people that would be good for me to talk to?"

"I've done about another eight employees since I last talked to you, and have done twenty altogether so far. I have another ten to go."

"I'll send you the names tomorrow."

"Thanks, Joe. It sounds like you have the hockey game on in the background. Who's winning?"

"The Rangers are up by two."

"Excellent. I'll let you get back to it." I hung up the phone with a smile, shut down my computer and turned off the lights to leave for the day.

When I got to Ranger's office, he was shutting down his computer. "I heard you coming", he said. "Are you ready to go up?"

I yawned. "Stick a fork in me, I'm done", I said.

Ranger came around his desk and captured me in a hug. He gave me a deep kiss. "How tired are you?" he said.

"Parts of me are waking up."

Ranger smiled. "Excellent."

I laughed as he guided me out of his office, locked his door, and walked with me to the elevator.

"With missing our workout we should take the stairs", he said.

"I took the stairs earlier today."

Ranger thought about smiling. "You know it doesn't count when you go down."

I grimaced. "It doesn't? Damn. Down is so much easier than up."

Ranger's lips quirked up. "That's why it doesn't count."

I laughed.

He tugged me to the stairs. I was proud of myself. I didn't grimace too much, I didn't break out in tears, and only stopped twice on the way up to catch my breath.

We got to the top of the stairs and Ranger opened the door for me. "Not bad", he said.

I huffed out a laugh. "I think I need a massage for that one", I said.

Ranger laughed. "This day keeps getting better and better. I found out that our company is doing better than I thought. Grandma didn't topple over any of the caskets and I get to give you a massage."

I smiled. "Rangeman is doing better than you thought?"

"Yes. I knew we were doing well, but with the increased money that you are bringing in, with the increased companies that we have signed on, we have done better than even I knew. We're in the position where we're able to hire eight more staff, and we did some good work at planning out the different roles of each of the existing and future staff members. I'm in the process of writing official job descriptions for each of the people. It's a huge body of work, but the new HR department will need it and we've been very loosey-goosey about it up until now."

"Why don't you get everyone to write their own job descriptions, and you fill in where people are leaving holes?"

"Do you think people would mind?"

"No, I don't. And I think it would be interesting to see what people write."

Ranger smiled.

He opened up the apartment door and turned on the lights, and I followed him inside and put my keys on the silver platter. I kicked off my shoes and put them in the hall closet, then followed Ranger in to the bedroom. By the time I got there, I had already pulled off my sweater and was working on my pants. "A little eager?" said Ranger.

"I like…massages", I said with a smile. "And it's been twenty-four hours since you last…massaged…me, and I can feel that my muscles are very tense."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Are there any areas in particular that are tense?"

"I think this is an all-over tenseness, but if you start massaging an area that I feel is particularly tense, I'll let you know that you need to concentrate on it."

Ranger smiled slightly. He turned me around so that my back was to his front, and slowly undid my bra and slid it off my arms. He moved my hair to the side and kissed the back of my neck, and suddenly those tense places just got a little tenser. I moaned. He moved his mouth to the side of my neck and nipped down the tendon to my shoulder. Parts of me were perking up and taking notice, and judging by the bulge I felt in my back parts of Ranger were perking up and taking notice as well. I moaned again and shimmied my panties off. As I did so, Ranger quickly undressed himself and I was able to see that he needed a massage just as much as I did.

"Any good massage starts out with the person getting the massage lying down", he said.

I lay down on the bed on my back.

Ranger's lips quirked up again. "Most of the time people want their back rubbed when they have a massage."

"My front is the part that feels tense though", I said

Ranger ran his hands over me and started to knead my flesh, and when he moved his way down my body from my shoulders to my lady bits, I sighed. "That's exactly where I'm tense", I said.

"Did you know that I read a study", said Ranger, "that said the tongue is the best instrument for giving a massage?"

I was starting to breathe hard. "Oh, yeah?"

"Let's try it out."


	15. Chapter 15

My grandmother called me the next day. "I'm going undercover, Steph", she said, "and I'm calling you for backup."

"What's going on, Grandma?"

"I have an appointment with the funeral home director, the one in Hamilton Township. I'm going to get to the bottom of this business with the stolen ashes."

"Grandma, stay far away from the investigation. The last time you got involved in an investigation in a funeral home you blew it up, and we were both in it at the time."

"It was just a little fire."

"It was a huge explosion and it singed off all my eyebrows and lashes. My picture was in the paper and it was the most unflattering picture I had ever had taken. People still bring up that picture when they meet me. Unfortunately for me, they recognize me from the picture. I don't know what that says about me, but they recognize me. But that's beside the point. The point is that you should let Morelli investigate the culprit, not investigate it yourself."

"I'll be careful, Steph. I'm wearing my bulletproof vest." A couple of months ago, Grandma found out that I wore a bulletproof vest when I went out to chase skips. She was fascinated and immediately decided that she also needed one, and she spent her next Social Security check on it. She'd had it for close to a month now, and she hadn't had an official reason to wear it. She had worn it, my mother told me, to Giovichinni's. Grandma said she was glad as she had seen Grandma Bella, Morelli's crazy old grandmother who liked to curse people. Unfortunately for me, she liked to curse me every time she saw me. Also unfortunately for me, her curses worked. Because Grandma was my grandmother, and because my grandmother _might_ have told Grandma Bella about the various people I had killed in the line of duty – which I told myself was fair because they were all trying to kill me first – and inferred that I would kill Grandma Bella as well if Grandma Bella didn't respect my grandmother, Grandma Bella liked to curse my grandmother just as frequently as she cursed me. Grandma said that the vest stopped the curse from working, and I thought that was just as good a reason as any to wear the vest on a regular basis. I thought I'd have to tell Lula of this surprising fact about bulletproof vests. She would be whipping out her own vest every time we went into the Burg just in case we saw her.

"A vest isn't good enough protection", I said. "You need to go home."

"You sound like your mother. This is why I had to sneak out of the house. I'm not going home. You can either come with me and act as backup, or I can ask Harriet Gerber to act as backup."

"Harriet doesn't have a brain in her head."

"I can be the brains of the sting", said Grandma. "Besides, she has her own car and can drive us there."

I sighed as I thought. "You aren't going to leave this alone, are you?"

"No. It's a good idea. Who better to get information than someone who is shopping around for funeral homes?"

I sighed again. "Where are you?"

"At the McDonald's near our house."

"I'll be there in about fifteen minutes."

"Don't forget your bulletproof vest."

I hung up the phone, shut down my computer, and left for the apartment to get my vest. As I walked, I phoned Morelli. The call went through to voice mail, and when the message clicked onto record, I said, "I don't have any answers for you yet, but I wanted to let you know that Grandma is on a mission to find out something about the funeral homes and the stolen ashes. She was on her way to the funeral home in Hamilton Township and has roped me into going with her. We apparently are shopping around for services. Let me know if there is anything specific you want me to ask. And don't worry. We'll both be wearing our bulletproof vests." I hoped that I sounded relaxed enough about our upcoming venture, but I suspected he could hear the quivering in my voice. For some reason, I felt like this was a really bad idea.

I didn't bother phoning Ranger. I knew that he was in the meeting with the bank manager and wouldn't be able to take my call, and I knew it wasn't important enough to interrupt him. I hoped. I sent him a text telling him where I was and who I was with. I added the part about our bulletproof vests as well, just in case. I didn't want him to worry, and I thought he might if he knew that I was going in unprotected.

I entered our apartment and went through to the bedroom. Ella had already been in. The bed was made and the apartment smelled lemony fresh. I walked into the dressing room and took off my flannel shirt and exchanged it with a white tank top. I then put on my black leather motorcycle jacket. Ranger had bought it for me for my birthday when I was skip tracing. It was stylish but bulletproof, and I hoped that I wouldn't need its safety features.

I kept my black jeans on. They were my favorite pair of jeans, so I hoped that they also wouldn't get wrecked. Blood was so hard to get out of fabric but at least they were black and wouldn't show stains. I slid my feet into a pair of combat boots, picked up my purse and my keys, and left the apartment again.

On the way down to the parking garage, I ran into Tank. "Congratulations on your promotion", I said.

Tank smiled. "Thanks. Going out?" he said.

"My grandmother is on a kick to investigate the different funeral homes about the stolen ashes. The funeral home director last night said that the funeral home should have figured out that the ashes had been switched based on the weight of the box. This made Grandma curious. If I don't take her, she's planning on taking Harriet Gerber, and Harriet is a bit senile and wouldn't provide good backup."

"Do you want someone taken off patrol to accompany her?"

"No. My grandmother, my problem. Thanks anyway."

"Are you wearing a bulletproof vest?"

"This whole jacket is bulletproof", I said with a smile. "I may be dumb, but I'm not stupid. I don't have a good feeling about things, and it might just be a reflection of the space I'm in right now, but I don't want to take the chance that something happens."

We got down to the second floor, and Tank pressed the number for the fifth floor again.

"I thought you were going down to the second?" I said.

Tank smiled. "I've seen your Spidey-senses at work before. If you don't have a good feeling about this, then neither do I. I'm giving you an ear bud, and I want you to wear it when you go into the funeral home. I'll have a team tail you and keep in contact with you through the ear bud. Hal and Hector are working patrol right now, and I can have them tail you until your expedition is over with. Come find me when you are finished and let me know that you are back."

"I'm probably being a little paranoid."

"Steph, you are never paranoid. You do, however, have a strong intuition. Trust it."

I nodded as the elevator rose again to the fifth floor. "Thanks, Tank", I said.

"I like your jacket", said Tank. "You said that it's bulletproof?"

"Yes. Ranger special ordered it for me online. He bought it for me for my birthday."

"Nice." We got to the fifth floor, and Tank escorted me into the equipment room. He took out his phone and sent a text to Hal and Hector, and asked them to meet me at the McDonald's. He then proceeded to give me an ear bud for myself and two extras for Hal and Hector. "Do you have your gun?" he said.

"I didn't think I needed it", I said. "And now that Hal and Hector are there, I definitely don't need it." Tank just looked at me. "Trust me", I said, "you don't want guns anywhere near my grandmother."

Tank smiled suddenly. "I got that idea when she came for lunch." Tank was one of the first responders to my grandmother shooting Rex. The monitors picked up the gun shot and the control room reported the shot to Tank. He brought a team up to Ranger's apartment within minutes.

I smiled.

"Do you have your pepper spray?" he said.

"I do."

"Good. Don't be afraid to use it."

"I won't." I didn't tell Tank that it would have to be a real emergency to use the pepper spray. My grandmother didn't have any particular health issues that I had to be worried about that I knew of, but I didn't want to find out about any new ones cropping up when she was out doing some investigative work with me.

Tank walked me to the elevator again. "Remember, set a code word up with Hal and Hector. If they hear the code word, they will come in and rescue you."

"I'll text you when this is over."

"Thank you. I'd appreciate that."

We took the elevator down to the basement and stopped briefly at the second floor to let Tank off again. I continued on to the basement, left the building and got in the car, and drove out of the parking garage and over to the McDonald's.

I parked near the doors and, as I walked into the restaurant, I phoned my mother. "Grandma called me from the McDonald's and I've come to pick her up. She has a bee in her bonnet about seeing the different funeral home directors to talk to them about the stolen remains of their clients. I figured that it would be better for me to take her and to possibly corral her rather than have her go with someone else."

She sighed. "I suppose you're right."

"I'll have her out for lunch, but will have her home for dinner. I don't know what time we'll be back. I'm hoping soon. I have a lot to do today."

"Thanks for taking care of this", said my mother. "You're a good granddaughter."

"Thanks, Mom. I have to go. I'm here right now."

"Is there any danger to the two of you?"

"Very little. Tank, who is my boss, has designated a patrol team to follow us around so that they are available if I need them."

"So you think there is some danger."

"I'm just being overly cautious", I said. "There is no reason to think that there is any danger facing us."

"Okay. I'll look forward to seeing you this afternoon. I'll make you some pineapple upside-down cake, and when you come you can bring your patrol team and give them cake as well."

"That would be nice, Mom. They'd like that. I have to go."

"Be careful, Steph."

"Will do, Mom." I got off the phone and walked into the restaurant, and over to where Hal and Hector were eating very large meals. "Hey", I said. My stomach was lurching at the smell of the food, and I wondered if I could get my grandmother's food to go. I looked down at their meals. They still had their burger to eat, and I wondered if they had each ordered two burgers. They were eating their fries, and that surprised me. Everybody knew that you ate the burger before the fries, because cold fries were still good but a cold McDonald's burger was a soggy, greasy mess. They tasted amazing hot. Cold? Not so much.

I handed Hal and Hector each an ear bud, and they turned theirs on and put them in their ears. I turned mine on as well, and we did a test with the control room. Eduardo was working the monitoring station in charge of the Rangeman team, and he'd be providing the control room support that we needed to get the job done.

By the time we had tested our ear buds, my grandmother had spotted us and was walking towards us. She arrived around the same time as Hal said, "so what's going on?"

"Hello, Hal, honey", said my grandmother. "I haven't seen you in a while. What are you doing here?"

"You are asking us to put our lives in danger", I said as I looked at my grandmother. "Because of that, Hal and Hector will be providing support to us. Hal and Hector and I have ear buds in and will be in constant communication with each other. They will be able to hear anything you say to me."

"I'm wearing my bulletproof vest as well", said my grandmother. "Those bastards won't make me a client of theirs too soon."

"No one is going to shoot you, Grandma. If you want to cancel this mission now, we can do so. No harm, no foul. I'll just take you home."

"No. I want to capture the person responsible for stealing the bodies."

"I think I missed something", said Hal. "What is our mission?"

I explained to Hal and Hector that the crematorium had five bodies stolen over the last couple of weeks and that the ashes were replaced by those from dogs. I then told them what the funeral home director said about the failure to notice the weight difference. And I told them that it was Morelli's case, and that he would be on the warpath when he realized what Grandma and I had done.

"Better your head than mine", said Hal. "Now that we are working more closely with Morelli, I don't think this will go over well."

"I know. I left a voicemail on his phone to tell him what we were doing. I will text him to let him know that you two are supporting me."

"What do you want us to do?" asked Hector. "Do you want us to just hang out in the parking lot and listen in to the conversation?"

"Yes, and come rescue us if we say the safe word."

"What's the safe word?" said Hector. "It should be a word that you don't use every day."

"Nooky", said Grandma. "That's a word you don't use every day." She paused. "At least, I don't. I haven't heard that word in years."


	16. Chapter 16

Grandma and I walked up the path from the parking lot to the front door of the funeral home. I hadn't heard back from Morelli or Ranger, which was probably a good thing. I also hadn't tossed my cookies from the food smells at McDonald's, which was definitely a good thing. Hal looked at me a little strangely, so I guess I looked pretty green, but Grandma thankfully didn't notice and Hal didn't ask.

"So I know that you're just getting married in the restaurant", said my grandmother, "but are you wearing a wedding dress? You should have a wedding dress on the day of your wedding."

"You're getting married, Steph?" said Hal. "That's great!"

"It's a secret", I said, "that I shouldn't have told my grandmother because she appears to be incapable of keeping a secret." I glared at her.

"Oops!" said Grandma.

"Please don't mention it to anyone. Ranger doesn't feel that it's safe for people to be able to easily trace our relationship and, when they do investigate Ranger, he doesn't want them to discover me at the same time. To do this, we are having the marriage ceremony but will not be registering the marriage with the state. We are just having a ceremony where we'll commit to each other in front of God. It will be a private ceremony, and unless Grandma can learn how to keep her thoughts to herself, she won't be invited. We'll only be inviting close family. We literally don't want anyone else to know."

"You know we won't tell anyone, Steph", said Hal.

"That's true, chica. Your secret is safe with us", said Eduardo.

"Does Morelli know?" said Hal.

"Yes, he does", I said. "He was the first person that I told. I thought it was only fair."

"That makes sense", said Hector.

"Okay, I'm going in", I said.

"That is so weird, you having a conversation and not being able to hear the other person's side", said Grandma.

"I know. You get used to it", I said.

We entered the funeral home and explained to the receptionist that we wanted to talk to the director. Minutes later, we were sitting in the director's office. "May I take your coats?" said the receptionist.

"Not me, thanks", I said. "I'm a little chilly."

"I don't mind if you take my coat", said Grandma.

She took off her coat, and the receptionist looked at her. "Is that a bulletproof vest that you're wearing?" she said.

"It's why I need to talk about my end-of-life planning", Grandma said. "My life is in danger."

"What's going on?" said the receptionist.

"Aliens are coming soon to get me so that they can suck all my blood out and feed me to their leaders."

"Uh-hunh", said the receptionist. Her eyes round, she slowly backed out of the room.

Grandma turned to me and whispered, "I don't think she believed me."

"Babe", said Ranger. "Eduardo and I will monitor this channel together. Hal and Hector, is everything quiet on your front?"

"Yeah, other than a need to congratulate you."

"On what?" said Ranger, his voice slow. I could tell that he was wondering which piece of good news they knew.

"On your upcoming wedding", said Hal. "Don't worry, Steph explained to us that it was a secret and why it was a secret, but Grandma let the cat out of the bag."

"Great", said Ranger. He sighed. "I guess it was pretty naïve to think that we might get away with keeping this information quiet, wasn't it?"

"Yes, but you also have to realize that we are security professionals. Many of us have had SERE training and were trained on methods of resisting torture tactics that the enemy might use to extract information. Most of us formerly held high national security clearances. We were entrusted with the nation's secrets, secrets that could have started World War Three. If we can handle that and keep that information to ourselves, we can surely keep the information that you are getting married a secret as well", said Hal.

"You have a point. I'll talk to Stephanie about it. Babe, how are you doing there?"

The funeral director came into the room and shook both of our hands. "I notice you have a bulletproof vest on", he said. "Is this a special occasion that you are dressed this way?"

"No", said Grandma. "I just need it as protection from the aliens."

"Okay. Just as long as your realize that you don't need to wear a bulletproof vest in our establishment. If you wanted to go to a place where you needed to wear a bulletproof vest, you should go to the funeral home on Stark."

My grandmother brightened. "Is it very dangerous there?"

The director smiled. "Yes, it is. So if you want a place where your friends and loved ones are assured of not joining you by the end of the night, our funeral home is a much better option."

"My grandmother and I were talking about your services", I said, "and I said that I would like to be cremated. My grandmother thinks that is a terrible idea. She has brought up the cases that were on the news last night, that there were some people who were cremated, but that their ashes were stolen. I told her that stealing the ashes is a once in a lifetime thing, no pun intended, but my grandmother said that it was done five times. I told her it was unlikely thing to have your ashes stolen. What do you think?"

"I think aliens did it", said Grandma. "It's the only thing that makes sense to me."

The funeral home director smiled but ignored my grandmother. "The stolen ashes all came from one funeral home, and that funeral home wasn't ours."

"How often is someone cremated on average? I mean, there were only five bodies that were stolen. If there are only five bodies cremated over a month, then the five bodies is significant. If there are one-hundred thousand bodies cremated over a month, then five bodies aren't significant. They could have just been misplaced."

"Any body stolen is too many bodies. I don't know what the rate of cremation is for the funeral home that was affected, but for this home, about two hundred bodies a year are cremated. Burial and graveside services are still our most popular book of business."

"What are the safeguards used in the cremation process to make sure that the remains they are saying are mine are actually mine? It's not like the remains could be defined by the color of their eyes or the length and style of their hair."

"That's true", said the director. "However, when your body goes to the morgue it is tagged and identified at that time. When the body is removed from the morgue and brought to our facility for preparation for burial or cremation, that tag is checked and recorded. If the body is meant to be cremated, the tag is left on the body and the body is sent to the crematorium in a cardboard box."

"Like a Fedex box?" said Grandma.

"No. A large box."

"Like a refrigerator box?" said Grandma.

"Like a cardboard casket", said the man. I could tell that he was having trouble not rolling his eyes.

"Is that for the people who can't afford a real casket?" asked Grandma.

"No", said the man with a long-suffering sigh. "That's for everybody. When you have arranged for a cremation, you don't buy your casket. You rent your casket."

Grandma sucked in a breath. "You mean other people's dead bodies have been resting in that casket before you?"

"Yes", said the director.

"That's sick", said Grandma.

"What would it matter to you?" I said. "You'd be dead."

"I just don't like the idea of lying in a used casket."

"I can understand your trepidation", said the director. "However, I assure you that we thoroughly clean the caskets between uses."

"It's just like a picture frame", I said. "You can replace the picture and it won't have any impacts on the frame."

"Hunh", said Grandma. "A picture wouldn't leave blood and guts on the frame like a body would in a casket."

"That's true, but hopefully we won't have to worry about this for a long time." I was having trouble not rolling my eyes as well.

"Anyway", said the funeral director, "if you have a viewing, we rent you a casket for the viewing and you can be seen by friends and loved ones and, after the viewing, you are sealed in a cardboard box, identified on the box, and sent to the crematorium."

"What does it say on the cardboard box?" said Grandma. "Delivery denied?" She turned to me. "Cremation is just the gates to Hell", she said. "That's why it's a fire. I don't want you to go to Hell."

"Grandma", I said, "cremation isn't the gates to Hell. By the time you are cremated, your spirit has already left and has already gone on to either Heaven or Hell. What happens to the body is immaterial. It is a much better environmental option to be cremated than it is to be buried and, when you are leaving this earth, isn't it a much better option to leave it with the least amount of environmental impact as possible?"

"How do you know that you don't go to Hell when you are cremated?" asked Grandma. "Have you ever been cremated before? No. You can't say that then."

"Yes, but neither can you", I said. "You don't know either."

"Hunh", said Grandma.

"We have burial as an option as well", said the funeral home director rather frantically.

"I'm not interested in that", I said.

"I am", said my grandmother. "How much does that cost?"

The funeral home director went over the costs associated with the two options. I stood at the end of the interview. "As you can tell", I said, "we are at the beginning of our thinking. Do you have any paperwork about the two options?"

"We may be at the beginning of the search for the right funeral home", said Grandma, "but we should decide soon. Those aliens could come down at any time."

The funeral home director shoved some paperwork into my hands, handed my grandmother her coat, and led us out of his office. He walked us to the door and shook our hands. I think I heard a sigh of relief from him as we left the building.

"Okay, they're out", said Hal.


	17. Chapter 17

We got in the car and Ranger laughed. "I have to say, your grandmother stays in character well", he said.

I smiled. "That she does", I said.

"Who are you talking to?" said Grandma.

"Ranger."

"Hi, Ranger", yelled Grandma.

"Grandma, you don't need to yell. Ranger can hear you even if you whisper."

"Can he hear this?" she said as she whispered.

"Yes, he can hear you", I said.

She let out a fart. "Could he hear that as well?"

I nodded.

"Damn", she said. "Those ear buds are amazing. I should have one as well. I'm going undercover too."

"I know that", I said, "but only one of us needs an ear bud. It gets too confusing for the control room if there are too many people in the same space who have ear buds. Besides, you would never give it back." Grandma's lip stuck out in a pout and I shook my head.

"Hunh", said my grandmother. "Are we off to the funeral home on Stark now?"

I sighed. "Haven't you had enough yet?" I said. "Isn't it time for your afternoon nap?"

"I don't have an afternoon nap", Grandma said. "I just go upstairs to think about things. My napping position just happens to be the same as my thinking position, and people think that I am napping when I'm not."

"Where have I heard that before?" said Ranger.

I smiled. "So the snoring you do isn't indicative of your sleeping state?"

My grandmother shook her head. "I don't snore."

"Uh-hunh. You have to remember, you recently stayed overnight with Ranger and me, and we could hear you snoring from the bedroom."

"That was the pot making me snore. I don't normally snore."

"Pot?" said Hal. I could tell that he was having trouble not laughing.

"We went to Mooner's house to buy some shoes", I said. "He had picked up a new shipment. When we were there, Mooner was smoking pot, and Grandma decided that she would try some. She fell asleep in the car on the way home, and slept through from five in the afternoon until six-thirty the next morning. We had plenty of time to hear her snoring."

"It was the best sleep that I ever had", said Grandma.

"I understand", I said.

"You should", said Ranger. "You were high yourself and you also had a good sleep."

"But I didn't snore."

Hal and Eduardo laughed. I could tell that Hector and Ranger were also amused.

We turned onto Stark and I sighed as we parked in the parking lot. There was a group of youths eyeing the car, and I didn't have high hopes that the vehicle would be there when we got out of the parking lot. I said so as I turned off the car.

"I'll send another team out", said Ranger. "Hal and Hector, if the car is stolen, let it be stolen. We'll sort that out afterwards. I don't want to let Stephanie and Grandma be unprotected in the funeral home."

"Roger that", said Hal.

"All right!" said Eduardo. "I picked today at three o'clock." The Rangeman winner of the car pool won a sum of money and the right to steal back my car if it was stolen, or the right to help me out if the car was just incapacitated. Just judging by the glee when people won, the sum of money was usually quite large.

Whenever I went on Stark, it was almost certain that my car would be stolen. I don't know what it was about that street, but I didn't have good luck there. Ranger didn't have the same problem; other Rangeman staff didn't have the same problem. It was just me, and I was frustrated with it. Lula said that it was because the residents saw me and I didn't look scary, that I looked like I wouldn't fight back. She told me that I needed to take my gun out and threaten to shoot them. Having a gun out with Lula was like having a gun out with my grandmother, however. Either person got really happy and really excited to see it, and I didn't know if Lula was saying that just so that she could see my gun, or whether she was saying that because she believed it. Despite knowing this, I had on occasion been in a bad enough mood to take my gun out and threaten the street gangs. All this did, however, was encourage the gangbangers to work faster when they were stealing my car.

I sighed. "Okay, Grandma. Do you want to do this thing?"

Grandma nodded.

We got out of the car and walked up to the funeral home. A group of men were standing outside the home smoking, and from the smell I didn't think that they were smoking straight tobacco. In fact, I didn't think that they were smoking wacky tobacky either.

"Hey, baby", said one of the men, "are you coming for us?"

My grandmother brightened beside me. "No, I wasn't", said my grandmother. She turned to me. "I've still got it", she said in a whisper. "Maybe I should have become a hooker after all." About a month ago, she had determined that she would like to get a job and, when she thought about all the things that she'd like to do, she decided that being a hooker was what interested her. "But for the right price", she said in a louder voice, "I could be convinced."

I groaned. It was bad enough that I was taking my grandmother onto Stark. I would never be allowed pineapple upside-down cake again if the men took my grandmother up on her offer. My mother made the best pineapple upside-down cake in town, and it was one of my favorites. Knowing this, if my mother was punishing me, she would make the cake – and withhold giving me a piece. It was the most effective punishment that I could think of.

The men laughed. "We weren't talking to you, old lady", said a wrinkled old man. "We were talking to your friend."

"Hunh", said my grandmother. "You would have had better luck with me."

I smiled at the men and passed them on the way into the funeral home. There was a viewing going on right then. I guessed that it was too dangerous in the streets to have viewings in the evening, but I could be letting my previous experiences with Stark Street color my views. Grandma checked out the refreshments table and harrumphed. The cookies were from a bag rather than the bakery cookies Stiva's served, and the drinks were lukewarm juice that was a sugar water rather than a real juice. I took a cup, not because I was thirsty but rather because I was starting to feel a little light-headed and I thought that having some glucose would even out my blood sugar levels. After all, I hadn't been able to eat breakfast and, because I missed my lunch, I hadn't had anything to eat since our dinner at my parents' the night before. Thinking about that, I took a couple of cookies as well.

I took a sip of the drink, but gave the rest to my grandmother. I didn't like the flavor of the drink, and it made my stomach lurch. My grandmother, however, drank all of her punch before enjoying mine.

We walked over to reception and asked to speak to the funeral home director. Several minutes later, a tired-looking man walked through to the reception desk. "You asked to speak to me?" he said.

"I was interested in learning about your funeral services", I said. "My grandmother and I are shopping around to pick out a possible funeral home. It's never too early to make your end-of-life arrangements."

The man smiled. "Let's go into my office."

"Your car has now been jacked", said Hal.

"Great", I said.

The director ushered us into a dreary office and sat us at the guest chairs in front of his desk. "Did you get a glass of punch or some cookies?" he said.

"I did", I said as I ate another cookie. My grandmother was starting to glow, and didn't need to answer his question. "I wasn't thirsty though, thanks."

The man nodded. "How may I help you?"

"I'm interested in funeral services", I said. "I'd like to be cremated, while my grandmother is horrified that I want to be cremated and wants me – and herself – to be buried."

"I see."

"So we have a few questions, and we were hoping to get a cost breakdown of the two different options."

"Okay."

"First of all, can you explain the process to being cremated? My grandmother seems to be uneasy about cremation and doesn't believe that she will be getting me back in the event that I am cremated. This business about the cremated dogs isn't helping."

"I understand. When a body dies, it is tagged."

"Like an item for sale at a store?" said Grandma.

"Not exactly, but it's a similar idea."

"Do they use those plastic doohickeys that are hard to get off? I always try to break them with my teeth but, now that I have false teeth, my teeth just come flying out when I do that."

"No, we don't use plastic tags", said the man.

"Do you use ink tags? You know, the ones that are meant to stop you from stealing the clothes but in actuality just throw off the line of the clothes when you are trying them on?"

"No, we don't use ink anti-theft tags."

"Hunh. Maybe you should", said Grandma. "Maybe if you did you wouldn't have people stealing the bodies."

"I don't know what is happening there", said the director.

"So the body is tagged", I said as I tried to steer the conversation back again, "and what happens then?"

"After the body is tagged, it is put in a cardboard casket."

"Is it lined with satin pillows?" said my grandmother.

"No. It's just a cardboard box. We put the person's name on the box as well as leave the tag on."

"Like putting an address on the box?" said my grandmother. "Can you specify which way you want the person to go? Of course, everyone would want to go to Heaven, so I guess the address would be redundant."

"Okay", I said as I frantically tried to steer the conversation back on track. "What happens then?"

"The cardboard box is sent to the crematorium. The body is cremated and the ashes are returned, ready for pickup by the executor."

"If that is the process, how were the ashes exchanged for the dog's ashes?"

"I don't know, but that's a question for the crematorium."

"How did you not realize that it was Rover Grover's body?"

"That seems to be the question of the hour. There are two funeral home directors that work in this location. I'm one. The other funeral home director was the other. She was the person on duty each time that the dog remains were returned."

"Have the thefts all happened from your home?" I asked.

"Yes, they have."

"Why?"

"I don't know the answer to that either. If I did, I could solve the issue."

He was starting to look a little suspicious, so I said, "okay, I have my heart set on cremation, but my grandmother has her heart set on burial. What can you tell us about that?"

He explained the process, but I didn't think my grandmother was taking the information in. She was, instead, giggling to herself and staring at a spot on the wall, and I thought that the drink had been spiked – I didn't know what the drink was spiked with, but it sure made my grandmother happy.

By the end of the interview, however, my grandmother's euphoric mood had disappeared, and she was back to contributing to the conversation again – unfortunately, perhaps, since she pulled out a gun as I took a list of the costs of the different services from the funeral home director. "I know that you're stealing bodies", she said. "Tell us what you are doing with the bodies."

To the funeral home director's credit, he didn't even look nonplussed at seeing the gun. Of course, we were on Stark and he probably saw guns a lot in his business.

"I don't know what is happening to the bodies", he said. "All I know is that we send the bodies to the crematorium in a big cardboard box and the remains are sent back in a little cardboard box. I don't know what happens to them there, and I don't know why the little cardboard box is filled with dog ashes."

"Didn't you notice a difference in the weight of the ashes?" I asked. My grandmother's hand was beginning to waver. "Grandma, put Elsie away."

"As I said, I wasn't the director onsite when the ashes came back. Yes, she should have noticed a difference but, for whatever reason, she didn't. Funeral home directors don't assume that there is a problem with the ashes when we get them back. We just assume that the ashes are from the person they say they are from. We don't question it, nor have we ever had a need to question it."

"I understand", I said. I looked at my grandmother, who was still waving her gun around. "Grandma, put away the gun."

"I need to shoot this bastard for switching out the ashes."

"Grandma, there is no need to take this personally. Just because I want to get my body cremated doesn't mean that you should take it personally."

"If you don't like what I said", said the director, "you are perfectly welcome to go to another funeral home. However, you won't find another home within our price range."

"That's because you're selling bodies", said Grandma. "That's the real reason that people are getting back dog ashes, isn't it?"

"No", said the funeral home director. "We aren't selling bodies."

"Grandma", I said, "who would they sell bodies to?"

"Colleges, dear", she said. "The medical schools have to get their victims from somewhere. Haven't you ever heard of grave robbers and body snatchers?"

"The cadavers aren't retrieved from funeral homes. They are just people who have died and donated their body to science."

"Doesn't make sense to me", said my grandmother. "Why would you donate it to science when you could have a perfectly good burial?"

"I know it doesn't make sense to you", I said, "but I think that's what I'd like to do. Organ transplant and donating my body to science with cremation of my remains. It would be nice to know that something good was coming from my death, don't you agree?" I looked at the funeral home director, and he was watching my grandmother's gun as she waved it around.

I figured that we had terrorized the funeral home director enough. "Grandma, it doesn't make sense to scare the funeral home director. He didn't do anything wrong and, if he did, it wouldn't help getting him upset. Why don't you put your gun away?"

My grandmother wavered some more.

"That's it", said Ranger. "Hal, Hector, go in and rescue Stephanie. And don't scare Grandma when you do it. She's just as likely to shoot as anything else."

"Roger that", said Hal.

Grandma straightened and sighted her gun on the funeral home director again. "Grandma, Hal and Hector are going to be in soon, and they are taking us home. Mom has made pineapple upside-down cake for us, but if you don't put away the gun, then I will tell Mom to not give you any."

Grandma gasped. "You can't do that", she said.

"I can and I will", I said.

I moved to take the gun away from my grandmother, and she got mad at me. She pointed the gun at me and shot. "That's what you get for stopping me from getting pineapple upside-down cake."

"What happened?" asked Ranger.

"You shot me!" I said.

"Why are you still standing?" said Grandma.

"There aren't any bullets in the gun." I heard the funeral home director breathe a sigh of relief. Ranger and the rest of the team did as well.

"I can't believe your mother! She's always taking the bullets out of my gun. Do you think we could stop by the store on the way home so that I can buy more bullets?"

"Not on your life", I said. "It's time to go."

There was a knock on the door and Hal and Hector walked into the room. "Come on, Grandma", said Hal. He put his arm over her shoulders and led her from the room. "It's time to go home for cake."

Hector waited for me as Hal and my grandmother walked out. "I'm terribly sorry", I said. "My grandmother has been very upset to know that I want to be cremated rather than buried, especially since this issue with the dog ashes."

"I understand", said the director.

I took two steps towards the door with the funeral home director following me, before turning and looking up at him. "What did you spike the punch with?" I said. "That's one hell of a side effect that my grandmother is experiencing."

"Bath salts", he said. "That's why we limit the guests to one glass."

"Bath salts do that? I thought they just made fizzy water in the tub."

The director smiled. "Bloom? Cloud Nine? Vanilla Sky? Flakka? You've heard of those, haven't you?"

"It's a drug, a very dangerous drug", said Ranger.

"Hunh. My grandmother had two glasses of punch. She drank my glass as well as hers."

"That would explain things", said the director.

"Why do you spike your drinks?" I asked.

"Every funeral home has to have a hook, and that hook differs according to the clientele of the area. For Stiva's, as an example, the draw is the cookies. Most of the people who go to Stiva's are elderly, and they like cookies. So Stiva's gets people coming to their funeral home because of the cookies and, to capitalize on that, they provide bakery-quality cookies and often make them themselves. People like that. In Hamilton Township, guests are all middle-class and often middle-aged – and they drink a lot. So the funeral home spikes the punch with rum. People there all like to have a little wake with their funeral. We have a different clientele here. Our deceased are often young, often the result of a drug overdose or a turf war. To keep our clientele happy, we provide drug-laced beverages, and people like that. It's just a marketing ploy."

"Good to know. Thanks for your help."

The funeral home director smiled at me and followed me out to the reception area. He stood surveying the scene as people laughed and joked with each other. They were far too happy to be at a funeral home, and the effect was unnerving. "I'll call Morelli", said Ranger. "Come on home."

Hal was escorting my grandmother out of the funeral home ahead of us when my grandmother turned around and yelled, "this funeral home is stealing bodies."

The other people in the lobby ignored my grandmother. I guessed stolen anything wasn't very important to them. I wasn't sure if that was a result of the bath salts, or if it was a result of the fact that they live on Stark and almost everything owned on Stark was stolen goods.

My grandmother didn't like being ignored. The drug that she had consumed seemed to have made her lose her common sense. She pulled out a gun and pointed it at the assistant who was distributing the punch glasses.

That got everyone's attention. I wasn't sure if it was because my grandmother had gotten out her gun or whether it was because she was threatening their supply of drug-laced punch, but the fifty people in the room all whipped out their own guns and pointed them at Grandma.

"It's time to go", I said. "Put the gun away, Grandma", I said loudly. "It's not loaded anyway."

The eighty-year old man sidled up to Grandma. "You know, I had been planning on taking you for a ride before you whipped out your gun", he said. "Now I just know that you're a crazy, fuck-ass bitch. That is so hot." I waded through the people to Grandma's side, grabbed her arm, and tugged her after me. "Wait", yelled the man. "I want to give you my number. We should get together sometime."

My grandmother turned around to go back and take the number from the man. "Hal?" I said.

Hal picked my grandmother up and carried her out of the funeral home and over to the patrol car. I looked where my car had been. It hadn't magically reappeared. I sighed.

As Hal did up my grandmother's seatbelt, I said, "talk to me. What do I need to know about bath salts?"

"It's a newer drug, a designer drug", said Ranger, "that is being used because it is harder to detect. It has a lot of the same symptoms as speed – increased energy and heart rate, nausea and sweating, and feelings of euphoria and general well-being. However, paranoia and hallucinations and delusions are also common. The upside is that generally, for three or so hours, you feel very good. The bad part is that after those three hours you crash dreadfully."

"Crap. This means that I'm going to have to stay with my grandmother, doesn't it?"

"I think, instead, that it means that you should take your grandmother to the hospital", said Ranger. "It can be a bad trip for those who are young. I don't know the effects on a senior."

"My mother is going to think that we drug up Grandma all the time", I said with a groan. "She's just forgiven me for taking Grandma into Mooner's house."

"I'll meet you at the hospital in the Emergency Department. Hal and Hector can go back to their regular patrol while we wait with your grandmother. By the way, Eduardo and Alvin picked up your car and are currently driving it back to Rangeman. They said that they have to wash it before you see it." I groaned again. Typically, when my car is stolen back, the Rangeman staff has fun by doing things like hitting the thieves with the car on the way out from where they were. This means that, when my car is returned, it often has blood and guts and bone fragments on the metal. The men think that I don't want to see that – and they're right. So they wash my car before they give it back to me. Needless to say, washing my car is a frequent occurrence. "I'll call Morelli and let him know about the drug distribution at the funeral home", said Ranger.

"I'll see you in Emerg. I have to call my mother now."

"I'm there for you, babe", he said. "Just remember that it isn't your fault."

"My mother won't see things that way."


	18. Chapter 18

My mother and Ranger were waiting at the hospital when we got there. We'd had to stop three times for my grandmother to throw up, and I for one was very glad when we arrived.

My mother looked stressed, but it looked like Ranger had been able to calm her down quite a bit. She had sounded more than stressed on the phone and, when I asked, she said that she had already done the ironing for the week. I felt bad for her. I knew this meant that she would be ironing underwear again. Hopefully this time it was clean underwear. The stench the last time wasn't good.

We walked into the Emergency Department together, and Ranger stayed with us while my mother got Grandma registered. After my grandmother was moved from the triage area into a cubicle, I said to my mother, "thank you for removing Grandma's bullets from her gun."

"Did she try to use it?" said my mother. She looked horrified. "I thought I would die when she shot Rex."

"This time she shot me."

"Oh, my God", said my mother. Her face went white and I put my arm behind her, ready to catch her in case she collapsed. "I was mad at you when I heard that Grandma had been drugged, but now I think I'm glad you were there."

"She was planning on going, if not with me then with Harriet. I just went with her to try to make sure that she didn't get into mischief. She got into it anyway."

My mother sighed. "I know", she said. "I'm glad you were there. Harriet wouldn't have gotten your grandmother to the hospital, and I would never have known why she was acting the way she is."

"Harriet probably would have had some of the punch herself and been unsafe to drive."

"I'm surprised that you didn't have some", said my mother. "You love fruit punch."

"Yes, but this wasn't fruit punch. It was sugared flavored water. I took a sip of it, but it made my stomach lurch. I gave my cup to Grandma, and she drank both of them. The funeral home director said that they are very careful to only serve one glass to each guest."

"Have you eaten lunch?" said Ranger. "I know you didn't eat much this morning, and you left the office before we ate lunch together."

"I haven't had lunch yet."

"How about we go to the cafeteria to grab a bite and leave your mother with your grandmother for a few minutes?"

"Is that okay with you?" I said to my mother.

My mother was always a mother, and upon hearing that I hadn't eaten lunch she said, "that's a good idea. Your face is very white. Are you coming down with something?"

"I hope not. I think it's just that I'm very hungry."

"Then go eat. I'll take care of things here."

I gave my mother a kiss on her cheek, kissed my grandmother, and followed Ranger from the ER. As we walked down the hall, he captured my hand and lifted it to kiss my fingers. "How are you feeling?" he said quietly. "Your mother is right. Your face is very white."

"Not great. My stomach was just starting to settle and I was just about to eat the scone that Ella had brought for my breakfast when Grandma called. I didn't get to eat the scone. I then picked up Grandma at McDonald's, at which point I did the impossible and didn't hurl. The smell of the food cooking at McDonald's was too much. I then started to feel worse and worse. I figured it was because I hadn't eaten. I tried the punch when we were at the last funeral home, and I had a couple of cookies – so two cookies are all that I have eaten since dinner last night. I'm hungry but nauseous at the same time."

We reached the cafeteria and looked at the selections of food that were available. I picked up a muffin and a banana and a large carton of milk. Ranger selected a sliced cheese tray, a bun, and a salad, before adding a large ginger ale. "That's all you're eating?" I said.

"No, that's what you're eating", said Ranger. "I ate back at the office."

"I don't think I can eat all this."

"Babe", said Ranger.

I followed him to the cash and waited while he paid for the food. He picked up the tray and took it to a booth at the back of the cafeteria, and sat so that his back was to the wall and he was facing the seating area. His eyes continually scanned the environment surrounding us.

I sat down with a sigh and opened the muffin package, and broke off a piece and chewed it slowly. That seemed to sit well, so I took another bite. "That's good", I said. "I was getting so hungry I was a bit lightheaded."

Ranger focused on me and frowned. "You need to eat, babe."

"It's just hard when you feel sick to your stomach all the time. It seems to be getting worse as well, rather than better. As of today, I'm nine weeks along. I thought it should have peaked about two weeks ago and be improving now."

"Just judging by how my sisters felt, I think there are no should and should nots in pregnancy. This pregnancy will be different than any other pregnancy, including your own if you decide to get pregnant again."

I sighed and swallowed back some tears. I didn't even know why I wanted to cry. I looked down at the table and took another bite as I willed away the moisture in my eyes.

"Ah, babe", said Ranger softly. He thumbed away the tears trembling on my lashes. "It will get better."

I smiled slightly. "I want it to get better now."

Ranger thought about smiling. "I know it feels like forever, but nine months is not very long. Just be glad you're not an elephant. They are pregnant for almost two years."

"If Valerie is anything to go by, I will look like an elephant before this baby is born."

Ranger cradled my cheek in his hand. "You will be the sexiest and the prettiest elephant around." He tenderly rubbed his thumb across my cheekbone as I nuzzled his hand and snorted out a laugh.

I took another bite of my muffin and slowly chewed and swallowed it. "Thanks", I said. "I needed a laugh." I paused as I took another bite. "It really has been a shitty day."

"I know", Ranger said. "I was worried about you when I got back from my meeting and Tank told me where you'd gone. What possessed Grandma to do some sleuthing on her own?"

"Remember when we were at the funeral home yesterday? The director told us that the bodies hadn't come from his funeral home, and that the person working in the funeral home should have known that the ashes weren't the remains of the deceased. Apparently Grandma thought about that all night, and she thought she'd go talk to the other directors to see what she could find out."

"You said that she was wearing her bulletproof vest?"

"Yes. It's not a good thing for her. It makes her feel invincible, and she makes stupid decisions."

"Why did you go with her?"

"She told me that she was going, no matter what. She suggested that, if I was too busy, she would go with Harriet Gerber, but I didn't want that. Harriet is partially blind, which makes her a hazard on the road, and she's almost fully senile, which makes her a hazard, period. Grandma would be like a bull in a china shop and would just get everyone upset and, in her attempt to be stealthy, she would alert everyone to the fact that an investigation was going on. It would be counterproductive to leave Grandma unprotected while she goes out to create mischief."

"So you went along to protect her."

I shrugged. "She's my grandmother. What was I supposed to do?"

"There are all sorts of things you could have done. For instance, you could have sent out a Rangeman employee to take her, you could have let her go with Harriet, you could have waited until I got back from my appointment and taken me. There are all sorts of things you could have done."

"My grandmother, my problem."

"My fiancé, my grandmother", said Ranger. He picked up my left hand and twirled the ring around my finger. "This ring means we share anything. That doesn't stop with bodily fluids. We share the good parts and the bad." His lips tilted up. "I haven't decided which I think Grandma is." I laughed again.

"You aren't mad at me for going off with my grandmother?"

"No. You're a good granddaughter. You care deeply about people and you like to take care of them. You don't want to see anyone hurt at all, let alone someone you care about, and you will do anything you can to stop that from happening. Did I think you were doing something particularly dangerous? No, I didn't. I understand you had an instinct that the day wouldn't go as well as you'd have liked, and I think you have great instincts and you should listen to them. That's the only concern I had, and you had already taken steps to mitigate the potential problem. Do I think you were at fault? No, I don't. You couldn't have foreseen the fact that the funeral home doses their guests with bath salts."

I took another bite of muffin and opened the milk container to take a sip. "I'm just glad the juice turned my stomach, or the baby would have been affected."

"I'm glad as well." He peeled the banana and handed it to me.

I took it from him and broke off a piece, chewed and swallowed. By the time I had finished the banana, I had also finished my milk. Ranger opened up the package of cheese and uncapped the ginger ale. "You know", I said, "I'm eating much more than I had planned."

"Eating is good for you. It's not good when you get lightheaded."

I broke the bun in half and layered on the cheeses, took a drink of ginger ale and ate some of the bun. Ranger smiled. I huffed out a laugh as I chewed and swallowed and Ranger looked pleased with himself. By the time I was finished my bun, however, I was getting full and my stomach was rocking and rolling. I drank some more ginger ale but as I moved to stand Ranger said, "let it sit for a moment", he said. "I don't want you taking a header while we were on our way back to the ER."

"Although, if I was to take a header anywhere", I said, "doing so at the ER would be the best place for it."

Ranger thought about smiling. He took my hand and played with my fingers. "I love you", he said as he smiled. "I was just sitting here and it hit me again that you agreed to marry me. I don't know if I have ever been this happy before."

"I'm happy too." I paused. "You never told me. How did it go at the bank today?"

"We got the construction loan for a year, and a guaranteed rate for the mortgage. The rate is lower than Bob and I thought it would be, so we were pretty happy about it." He smiled again. "The architect has a couple of construction companies that they have recommended for me to interview. The meetings with them have been set up for next Monday afternoon."

"That's really exciting."

"I hope that the construction company will get all the approvals and permits done this winter and I hope to break ground in March. The building will take just over a year to build, so I hope to be in our new apartment before the baby is a year old."

I smiled. "It will be nice for the baby to have its own room."

"I was thinking about that. My sisters believe that it makes the most sense for the baby to be put into his or her own room as soon as they come home from the hospital, and that makes the most sense to me. The baby would get used to the sounds of their own room and to not hearing their parents talking and snoring when they are sleeping. Our apartment will have the living room subdivided to add a couple of rooms when the apartment is reworked. I was thinking a few things. I think my office should move to the other side of the apartment, and the den change into a bedroom for the baby. This would mean that the apartment would have an office and a bodyguard's bedroom off the living room, and the master and an extra bedroom on the master's side of the apartment. I think this should be done soon, so that when the baby is born he or she has a place to go."

"You don't mind changing your apartment?"

Ranger's lips quirked up. "We're changing it anyway. We might as well make use of the changes. I was thinking, if I can hire the contractors, to get those changes made as soon as we can. If we break ground in March, I was hoping that the changes to the apartment can be done in February."

"That makes sense. Then Julie will have her own room to stay in when she comes for the commitment ceremony."

"That's what I was thinking. How are you feeling now?"

"Less lightheaded, thanks."

"Good. Do you want the salad?"

"No, thanks. I'm going to stay with what I had. My stomach isn't steady as it is."

"Babe."


	19. Chapter 19

He stood and gathered up my garbage, and I took the plastic fork and the container of salad. I figured we could give it to my mother for dinner in case she was in the hospital for a long time. We walked back to the ER, and when we got there my mother was talking quietly to Morelli. Joe gave me a hug. "You feeling okay?" he said. "You look a little white."

"I'm okay. I didn't have breakfast or lunch, so I was a little hungry."

"Okay", he said. He inspected my face, and I guess he could see that I was just experiencing morning sickness, because he put his arm around my shoulder and said, "Steph and I are going to take a walk so that she can tell me what happened."

Ranger smiled at us and turned to my mother. "What did the doctor say?"

"They have administered a medication of some sort. I don't know which one. They said that it would calm her down. She tried to pull her gun on the doctor."

"Crap", I said. Tears came to my eyes. "I'm so sorry", I said. I looked at my mother, and saw that she was battling back tears as well.

"Come on", said Joe as he guided me out of the cubicle. "I need to talk to you and your mom doesn't need to hear this."

I looked at my mom and grandmother, nodded once, and walked with Joe out of the ER. He walked with me back to the cafeteria. "I just came from here", I said with a tremulous smile.

"I thought you could use a ginger ale or a peppermint tea. Had a tough day?"

"Yeah. I've been battling nausea all day, and then you add in this thing with my grandmother and it's been a shitty day."

"I know. Tell me what happened."

Joe poured some hot water over a peppermint teabag and went through the cash, took out his wallet and paid for the drink. "Thanks", I said as he led me to a table.

He waited until I sat down, and then sat down across from me. "Talk to me", he said.

I told him about Grandma deciding to get to the bottom of the missing ashes and about what the two different funeral home directors said. "I thought we were safe. Grandma was wearing a bulletproof vest. She had seen mine and wanted one for herself. She bought one and has been anxious to use it. Did you see it?"

"Yes. The hospital staff had to take it off to put on the heart monitor. She almost decked the nurse who took it off."

"Oh, boy."

"Precisely. So first let's talk about what you found out from the funeral home directors, and then I want to hear details about the drugs."

I told him about the process involved with cremation, what the funeral directors said about the different weight of the ashes, and that the theft only happened when one particular director was on duty. "I need to get back in to the office to look at the different employees at the funeral home."

"Okay. It would be helpful to have you do that sooner rather than later."

"I'll try. I don't know what time I will finish here."

"Fair enough. Tell me about the drugs."

"They said it was a marketing ploy. They added bath salts to the punch to encourage people to come back to their funeral home. They said that Stiva's had bakery-quality cookies, the home in Hamilton Township spiked their punch with rum and, similarly, they had to do something community-appropriate as well. They dose the juice and oversee the distribution of the drugs, and they think it is safe because they only let one glass go to each visitor."

"And he said it was bath salts?"

"Yes."

"Okay. I'll have the punch tested. I'll write up a formal witness statement and come by your office to get you to sign it."

"Thanks, Joe."

"Is Ranger going to take you home soon? You look like you're done."

"I am done. I need a nap, but I can't leave Grandma."

"I'll stay with your grandmother. If you could go home, take a nap, and then look into the funeral home's employees, I'd appreciate it." I must have looked like I was thinking of it longingly, because Joe smiled. "Cupcake, you need to take care of yourself, and letting yourself get run down isn't going to help anyone."

Tears came to my eyes. "Shit", I said.

Joe laughed and handed me a napkin, and when I finished dabbing my eyes he stood and helped me from my seat. He handed me my tea and walked with me back to the ER. As we walked into the cubicle, Morelli went and spoke quietly to Ranger, and I said to my mom, "how is she?"

"She's just sleeping now. The doctor is happy that her heart isn't showing any signs of damage from being drugged. He said that she could probably go home, but he thought that it would be better to keep her just a little longer just because of her age. They don't want to take any chances."

"I'm glad about that", I said.

"Helen", said Joe, "I've asked Steph to go back to work for me this afternoon. There are some things that I need Steph to do, and she's the only one that can do them. I'll stay with you and Grandma."

"You're probably busy", said my mother. But she looked a bit panicked and I could tell that Morelli understood that.

He put his hand on her arm and squeezed slightly. "I'll stay", he said. He looked up at me and smiled, then looked at Ranger and nodded.

Ranger walked over to my mother and gave her a hug. "Keep us informed as to what is going on, and let us know when you are leaving."

"We will", said Morelli. He gave me another hug and shook Ranger's hand, and sat down beside my mom.

"Thanks, Joe", I said.

"You're doing me the favor. I know you'd rather be here."

I smiled, kissed my grandmother on her cheek, and then looked at my mother. I gave her a hug. "Take care of her", I said.

"I will, Steph. Thank you for taking care of her this afternoon. I know that your grandmother didn't make it easy for you."

I nodded, my eyes filling with tears again. "Oh, shit", I said.


	20. Chapter 20

I tried to stretch out the ache in my back as I yawned. I was exhausted, and I had never wished for coffee as much as I did right then. I had researched all ten of the funeral home employees and on the last one, I hit pay dirt. The last employee was Jennifer Harris, the girlfriend of Curtis Brown. The last name rang some bells for me, and when I looked into it I found out that he was Otis Brown's cousin and Joss Brown's brother. He died three weeks after Joss had been arrested, which I had already knew, but what I didn't know is that he died from a bath salts overdose. I wondered if the funeral home had been the source of the drugs.

I knew I had found something important and, as I wrote up my findings in the summary report, Morelli called. "Hey, cupcake. Your grandmother has just been released and your mother is taking her home. She's tired but fine, and your mother has reminded me that you're having dinner with Val and Albert tomorrow. She said that it's still happening and you can't get out of it that easily."

"Okay. It's our celebration dinner."

"You sound exhausted."

"I am, but I found your link." I told him about Jennifer Harris.

I could hear him brighten up. "That's fabulous", he said. "I would never have found that link."

I laughed. "You probably would have, but thank you for your encouragement."

Morelli chuckled. "How much do you want to bet that there is a link between Curtis' overdose and the fact that the funeral home was dealing drugs?"

"That's what I figured as well."

"I'll look into it. I appreciate everything you did. Make sure you bill the TPD for your hours."

"I will. I'm going to go. I'm going to call Ranger and have him carry me to bed. I'm too tired to walk."

"Sleep in tomorrow, cupcake."

"I will. Make a tight case against them, Morelli. I want to see them go down."

"I will, cupcake."

I said goodbye to him and stretched my back again. Then, thinking that I really was too tired to walk up the stairs – or even to take the elevator – I called Ranger.

"Babe?" he said as he answered the phone.

"I'm too tired to walk down to see you. Can you carry me up to the apartment?"

"Seriously?"

"Yeah. I'm exhausted, my back is killing me, and I just want to go to sleep."

"I'll be down in a minute or two. Just let me shut my computer down."

I shut my own computer down, and then put my head down on my desk. By the time Ranger got to my desk a couple minutes later, I was sound asleep.

"Babe", said Ranger as he shook me awake.

"Don't wanna wake up."

Ranger sounded amused. "Babe, put your arm around your neck. Let's get you to bed."

"Morelli just called and said my grandmother was being released. He said she was fine but tired, and it didn't get us out of our dinner tomorrow."

"That would be today, babe." I snugged my face into his shoulder as he lifted me. "It's almost one."

"My dad must have wondered where his dinner was."

"I'm sure he coped."

"I'm tired, Ranger."

"I know, babe. I want you to sleep in tomorrow."

"Okay." My eyes closed. I was asleep again before we made it to the elevator.

I woke up as Ranger put me on the bed. "Let's get your pants off you so that you're more comfortable." He took my shoes off, put them on the floor, took my socks off, and pulled my pants off. "Uh, babe?"

I cuddled into the blankets. "What?"

"You're bleeding."

"Where?"

"From your vagina."

My eyes popped open and I sat up.

Ranger went into the dressing room and riffled through my clothes until he found a pair of yoga pants. He brought them out to me with a fresh pair of panties. He got me a sanitary napkin from the bathroom and, as I sat there slightly stunned, he affixed the pad to my clean panties, stripped off my bloody panties, put on the new panties, and pulled on the clean pants. "Come on, babe. It's time to go to the hospital."

Tears came to my eyes. "I'm not losing the baby, am I?"

"I don't know", said Ranger. He looked worried, though, and that scared me almost more than anything else. Ranger put my shoes on and, as I stood, he scooped me up into his arms again. "I think it would be a better idea for you to stay off your feet, babe."

The tears spilled over, and I snugged my face into his shoulder and sniffed the comforting scent of Bulgari Green. I felt my heart rate settle, and the sick feeling in my stomach eased slightly. Ranger was with me, and I knew he would make things right.

Things happened fast from that point on. Ranger carried me down and put me in his Cayenne, and quickly drove me to the hospital. It was a ten-minute drive that he made in five. He parked in short-term parking in front of the Emergency Room and carried me into triage. He explained the problem, and a few minutes later I was streamed into a cubicle. There mustn't have been too many knifings or shootings clogging up the ER.

Ranger lay me down on the bed, spread a blanket over me, and sat on the guest chair to the side. I moved onto my side and curled into a fetal position. "I'm scared, Ranger", I said.

"I know. I am too."

"Is this because I didn't want the baby?"

"This has nothing to do with your concerns about the baby. You haven't done anything wrong."

"I feel like this is my fault."

"It's not your fault, babe. If it was anyone's fault, it was mine for encouraging you to work as long as you did."

"It wasn't your fault. You wanted the baby."

"Yes, I did. It took me by surprise, but I wasn't unhappy at first and it didn't take long until before I was out and out thrilled about the baby."

"I was scared."

"I know."

"How do you know that I'd be a good mother?"

"Because this? This worry about the baby and your worry that it was your fault? That shows that you'll be a good mother."

"You know, I didn't think I wanted a baby. I had all sorts of reasons why I didn't want to have a baby, and you slowly worked through most of them. But now that I know I might lose the baby? I'm scared."

Ranger clasped my hand and lifted it to his lips. He kissed my fingers, turned my hand over, and kissed my palm. And then we waited, with terrified tears slowly falling down my face, for the doctor to come.


	21. Chapter 21

Ranger insisted on carrying me out of the ER as well. They had done an ultrasound, and the baby was still moving and alive. The doctor said that, at this point, the pregnancy was still viable, and the best thing to do would be to rest, keep my feet up, and see my obstetrician in another couple of days. He recommended lots of sleep and a reduction in stress levels. I could see that I would be going insane. Ranger, with his overprotective nature, would make sure that I spent a significant amount of time in bed, and since the doctor had banned us from having sex during my period of confinement, spending time in bed wouldn't be very fun.

"I think we should cancel with your mom", said Ranger as he put me into the car. It was five in the morning, and I don't know how he could even think at all, let alone think about the dinner at my parents' house. I was pretty well comatose. It had been a long, long, anxious day, and I was ready for bed.

He shut the door quietly, walked around the car and slid into the driver's seat. "We can't do that without letting my mom know about our pregnancy", I said. "I just don't want to go there."

He turned the car on and guided it towards Rangeman. "I'm okay if you want to tell your family."

"I don't want to hear about the problems we are having. My mom will say that it's because I waited so long to have children, there will be an unspoken comparison to Val and her five kids, and I just don't want to hear it."

"Babe", said Ranger.

I sniffled and swiped the tears from my face. "Ranger?"

"Yes?"

"Do you think this is punishment for not wanting the baby?"

"No, I don't. I think it's a reaction to the stress of the day."

"I've decided. I want the baby now. I wasn't sure before, but I've decided now."

"You wanted it before as well. It's okay to have concerns. Being pregnant is a crimp in your lifestyle. I hope that it won't be as much of a crimp once the baby is born, but getting there will be a sacrifice for you. I recognize that, and if I could change it I would. I will do whatever I can to help you and to ease your way, but you'll be doing the heavy lifting on this one."

"I feel like the worst mother in the world. I might not be able to even keep the baby."

"Babe, you have to think positively. If and when you lose the baby, we'll deal with it then. But in the meantime, we'll assume that both you and the baby are fine."

"How can it be so easy for Val? She's had five."

"I know, but that's okay. She's not a badass like you, she doesn't have a kick-ass career, and she has a sixth child in her husband. I hope you don't feel the same about me." He turned into the Rangeman parking lot and, after he parked the car, I opened the door. Ranger told me to wait, and he ran around to my side, lifted me up, and shut the door with his hip.

I could see that this damsel-in-distress routine would be getting very old very fast. I was already tired of it.

"I'm not planning on waking you up tomorrow", said Ranger as we waited for the elevator. The doors opened and we got on. We were the only ones on the elevator, and I was glad. I didn't have to want to pretend to be happy. I didn't want to have to pretend to be okay. I didn't want to have to explain why I was being carried.

"Okay. But I want to go to my parents' for dinner and I want to pretend that there is nothing wrong." Ranger thought about that, but I could see that he didn't like it. "Please, Ranger? I really need to pretend that there is nothing wrong."

I sounded like I was on the verge of hysteria, and I guess that Ranger could hear it, because he paused and said finally, "alright. I'll agree to that as long as you spend the rest of the day lying down with your feet up."

"I'll be bored lying in bed."

"Then lie on the sofa, babe. Lying down, feet up. That's the deal."

"I think I'm really going to hate the next few months."

"It won't be for forever. At the beginning of the week you could get the all-clear, and you'll be able to continue your life. Perhaps a little more carefully than you were recently, but you'll be able to continue your life."

"It still sucks to have to do this all for a baby."

"I know, but I don't look at this as for the baby. I look at this as what you need to do for you. Babe, I would be upset if something happened to the baby. But I don't know the baby yet and it is still just a concept. I would be devastated, though, if something happened to you. If we decide that we want to have a baby and we lose this one, we can always try again. But I can't make another you. You have to look after yourself, if not for yourself than for me."

We got up to the apartment and Ranger put me down on my feet so that he could open the door. We walked inside, and Ranger took my coat from me to hang up in the closet, and I walked through from the hall to the bathroom. I pulled down my pants to use the toilet, and stared at the blood on the pad. Tears flowed down my face again.

I heard Ranger coming, so I hurriedly finished and stood, pulled up my underwear, and kicked off my pants. I was washing my hands as Ranger walked in the door carrying a t-shirt of his. I was glad he brought one of his shirts. There was always something reassuring about wearing his clothes. They made me feel like I was getting a full-body hug all the time.

I washed my face, glad that I had worn waterproof mascara, and moisturized my skin.

"Is your back still sore?"

"Yes, but I don't know if it is because of cramping or whether it is because of tension or whether it is because I spent so much time sitting yesterday."

"Your desk chair isn't comfortable?"

"I hate saying this, but I think I just need to stretch."

Ranger thought about smiling. "Not today, babe. I don't want you doing any exercise for the next few weeks, maybe even until the baby is born."

I put some toothpaste on my toothbrush. "I never thought that I would say this, but I'm not sure if I am happy or unhappy to not have to exercise. I actually enjoy doing self-defense and I put up with stretching and cardio. While I don't enjoy cardio, I like not getting out of breath the same when I am chasing skips."

"It will be a bitch getting back in shape for you, but I think that's what we'll have to do", said Ranger. "I'll help you after the baby is born."

I quickly brushed my teeth, stripped off my top and bra, and floated Ranger's top over my head. I padded through to the bed and climbed in while Ranger finished in the bathroom, and by the time he came to bed I was asleep.

There is one thing about me that I have learned in life. When something upsetting happens to me, with a good cry and an even better sleep, I would wake up feeling much more optimistic about things. I wasn't a glass-half-empty person, and being negative didn't come naturally to me. This was no different. By the time I woke at three the next afternoon, my outlook had improved. I stretched. My back didn't ache any longer and I didn't know what that meant, but I was taking it as a good sign.

I needed to go to the bathroom, and got up and padded through to the bathroom. I sighed in relief as I went – my bladder had been very full and uncomfortable – and looked at the pad. I thought there might have been a little less blood, and I put a clean pad on so that I could judge the flow better. Ranger walked in as I was brushing my teeth. "I heard you up", he said. "How are things going?"

"I think there is less blood", I said after I gave a final spit and rinsed my mouth.

Ranger gave a relieved smile. "I still want you off your feet."

"I figured."

"Ella sent up a yogurt parfait and some muffins for your brunch."

"Did you eat?" I looked at him. He still looked tired and worried, and I have him a hug and burrowed into his body.

He tucked me under his chin and sniffed my hair. "I did. I ate about four hours ago, but when Ella sent up some brunch for you she also sent up a sandwich for me. I was saving it for when you woke up." He rubbed my back gently, up and down, in a comforting pattern.

"What time did you wake up?"

"About ten-thirty." He reached down and lifted me off my feet, and carried me through to the den. He put me down on the sofa and retrieved my breakfast and his lunch before coming back and handing me the food and sitting down on the other end of the couch. He lifted my feet and put them in his lap.

"What have you been doing while I was sleeping?"

"I did some work for the office, but now that you're awake I might work out for an hour or so. We can shower together afterwards. Just so that you know, I told Joe and Tank about what happened. They are wishing you well, and Joe asked if he could come over to see you. I told him that I didn't know what time you would wake up. I was wondering about having Joe over to visit while I went down to work out."

"You don't mind?"

"It would make me feel better knowing that you aren't alone. I'm feeling more settled knowing that you aren't bleeding as much, but I am still worried about leaving you alone."

"I'll be fine."

"So you don't want Joe to come over?"

"No, it will be nice to see him, if only so that I can reassure him. I would also like to talk to him about the case."

"As long as it doesn't stress you out in any way."

"It will stress me out more to not have anything to do or not be able to help in any way than it will to be involved."

Ranger finished his sandwich and, as I picked at my yogurt and my muffin, he looked at me. "Lying down, babe. That's what we agreed to." I scooted down on the sofa, and he smiled and proceeded to give me the best foot rub that I had ever had. Ranger's foot rubs were magical. He had just the right amount of pressure – not too firm and not too tickly – and they were something that I had always enjoyed. That time was no different.

By the time Ranger was finished, I was almost purring with pleasure. He took out his phone and texted Joe, and he turned on the television. "Are you sure you want to go to your parents' for dinner?"

I smiled sadly. "All my life, Valerie has been better than me at things. She was better at school; she was the model child and never did anything wrong; she stuck it out with her first husband longer than I did; she had children. All my life, I have never been as good as her. Our paths have taken a different turn now that we are older and I have become much more career-oriented and less family-oriented than her, but that is just something that she is seen as excelling in as well. I'm seen as less of a woman than her, and I don't want my parents and grandmother to have more proof that I'm not as good as her. They already have proof enough."

"That's ridiculous", said Ranger. "You are a wonderful woman and going through this rough patch in your pregnancy doesn't make you less of a woman. You heard what the doctor said. It is quite common to experience bleeding in your first trimester and only ten percent of women who experience bleeding at your stage of the pregnancy have a miscarriage. Do you think all those other women are lesser women because they experience bleeding? Do you think they aren't as good mothers?"

"Val didn't experience bleeding."

"So? Val isn't you. She might not have experienced bleeding, but there is no reason to assume that you won't carry a baby to term as successfully as her."

Ranger got a responding text, and as he read his phone, he looked relieved. "Joe will be here in about twenty minutes."

"Then let me get some pants on", I said. "I may have formerly gone out with him. I may have even formerly lived with him for a few months. That doesn't mean that I want to see him without pants on."

Ranger smiled slightly. "I'm glad to hear that."


	22. Chapter 22

Ranger let Joe into the apartment and took him back to the den where I was on the sofa, then left the apartment to do an hour-long workout. He told Joe not to let me up unless I had to go to the bathroom, and I didn't know how to tell him that I wouldn't get up, that I had promised – and I hadn't even crossed my fingers behind my back when I had done it.

Joe came and sat in the spot on the sofa that Ranger had just vacated. "How are you doing, cupcake?" he said.

"I'm a bit scared. But I guess the good news in all this is that I have now decided that I want his baby." Tears came to my eyes. "I just hope this realization hasn't come too late."

"You have to think positively", he said. "There is no reason that the baby won't make it. After Ranger contacted me this morning, I did some internet research. Twenty percent of women experience bleeding in their first trimester. Many of those women go on to having healthy babies. I believe you will as well."

"Val has had five babies successfully."

"And so will you – maybe not five", he smiled, "but you'll have babies successfully. Cupcake, I'm glad that Val hasn't had any problems with her pregnancies. Having children is all she has in her life. Yes, she helps out her husband at the law office, but I don't know if she likes her job or is very good at it. She has her five kids and a husband who is more like another kid than a husband. But besides, her family, she has very little in her life. Comparatively, you have two jobs that you are good at and you enjoy. You have a man for a husband rather than a boy, you have friends like me who are close enough to you to be family, and you have a family that loves you. You are so much more than Val. Allow her to have trouble-free pregnancies. It doesn't make you a lesser person."

Tears came to my eyes. "Thanks, Joe", I said.

"Are those tears? Crap, don't cry, cupcake. I hate it when you cry." I snorted out a laugh, and Morelli smiled. "Seriously though, I love you and I don't think you are in any way a lesser woman."

I sighed.

"I blame myself for your bleeding", said Morelli. "If it wasn't for me, you wouldn't have been working as hard as you were."

"I could have left it", I said. "It was my decision to work as many hours as I did on the files. It was my decision to not go to bed when I was tired."

"I shouldn't have pushed you. I knew that you were tired."

"I know, but I wouldn't have slept anyway. I needed to work on that case, if nothing other than for my grandmother's sake. It burns me that the funeral home is drugging its guests. I don't know if they are doing so to try to get business or what, but what they are doing is criminal."

"I know. I was working on the case a little today. Jennifer Harris is the other director at the home. Friends said that her comment about Curtis was that he may have been a bit of a loser, but he couldn't have treated her better. He was loving and kind and supportive. My instinct, from looking at his Facebook page and that of Jennifer's and Joss's and Otis's, is that Joss and Curtis were the two people who broke into the house. Otis's fingerprints don't match the fingerprints left at the scene, so I suspect that they were Curtis's. So Joss and Curtis break into the house and steal the ashes. Joss tells Otis that they are the best high that he has ever experienced. Meanwhile, Curtis takes advantage of the drugs offered through Jennifer's funeral home and overdoses and dies. Jennifer is furious with the funeral home and blames them for the death. That's the set up for the crime.

"Joss encourages Otis to steal ashes so that he can get high again, and Jennifer encourages Otis to do them from her funeral home, hoping that the resulting investigation causes problems with the home and potentially gets someone to look into the drug trafficking. She wants to cause problems for the home but she doesn't want to lose her job. Otis steals the ashes and gives them to Joss to snort, and substitutes the dogs in lieu of the bodies. Jennifer receives the ashes and doesn't report the discrepancy in weights. Jennifer and Otis each give anonymous tips to the police to report the thefts."

"There were two separate people reporting the thefts?"

"Yes. One was female and one was male. Vice has heard rumors of a new drug that has hit the streets. It has just come about in the last couple of months – since Otis started stealing bodies. I suspect that this drug that is currently being marketed is actually cremated ashes. Some people say that it has a reaction in the body like speed and causes euphoria, whereas other people say it has no impact upon their mental or physical state."

"I wonder if there is a difference according to the person who has been cremated. For instance, if the person died of a drug overdose, would their cremated ashes cause more of a reaction than ashes from a clean body?"

"There's a gruesome thought. To know for sure, we'd have to test the ashes. However, knowing that wouldn't explain why the original ashes made Joss and Curtis believe that they were a good drug. Those ashes were from a dog and, I would hope anyway, wouldn't have any drugs tainting the ashes."

"I wonder if the ashes made them bark at cats?" Morelli smiled. "Scratch for fleas?" Morelli laughed. "Do you think it could be a mind-over-matter scenario?"

"That's absolutely what I think", said Morelli. "So Otis steals the drugs for Joss, I suspect that Joss is trafficking them, and Jennifer is hiding the thefts. All is being done to cause problems for the funeral home, and to bring in money."

"Quite a complicated scheme."

"Not really. I'll look into Jennifer and Otis more over the next few days. I have your In-Spect reports to go from for the four people – Jennifer, Otis, Joss and Curtis – and I'll do more in-depth research from there."

"I can do that work for you."

"No. You're off on sick leave for the next week. You need to rest and get better."

"Can't you do that work from the office here? I can give you ideas from lying down on the sofa and you can do the work of looking at it. Alternatively, Ranger can bring me my laptop and I can do it from a lying position on the sofa."

"You just don't want to be bored. I know you."

"That's true. Even if all I can do is be someone you can bounce ideas off, I'd like to be the person who helps you. With them drugging Grandma, they made this personal."

"We'll talk to Ranger about this."

"That's fair. I'll ask him after you leave and will send you a text, and then we aren't putting him on the spot if he doesn't feel comfortable with it."

"That makes sense. Have you talked to your mother at all? Do you know how your grandmother is?"

"Ranger talked to her this morning. My mother called and Ranger told her that I was in the shower to hide the fact that it was noon and I was still in bed. She said my grandmother had slept well and that she was up and around and acting like nothing had happened. She wasn't even sure that Grandma fully remembered what had gone on. Ranger said that she might not, or she just might not want to talk about it. He did research afterwards, and nothing in what he saw indicated memory loss was typical."

"True. The doctor said that confusion and drowsiness, as we saw yesterday, was common, as were the other negative impacts of anxiety and aggression and paranoia that we saw."

"Grandma was pretty messy."

"Yes, she was. She must have had quite a bit of the drug."

"The funeral home said that they are careful to never give anyone more than one drink, but I didn't like the taste of mine and gave it to my grandmother to drink after my first sip."

"As much as I'm upset that your grandmother was drugged, at least she wasn't pregnant and her baby couldn't have been adversely affected."

"That's true. I was worried, after I started bleeding, that the baby had been affected from the amount that I had consumed. But when we were at the hospital last night, I asked the doctor and he said that a sip of juice that had been spiked with bath salts shouldn't have caused that sort of reaction."

"That's good to know."

"Did you want me to do an official witness statement?"

"Yes", he said. He went to the front clothes closet and retrieved a form and a pen. He brought it back to the den. "I like your motorcycle jacket. I noticed it yesterday. Is it new?"

"It is. Ranger got it for me for my birthday. It's bulletproof, because he knows I hate wearing a bulletproof vest."

Morelli smiled. "I may not always agree with Ranger getting you into trouble, but he does take care of you, doesn't he? I mean, he lets you skip trace and by not giving you a hard time about it I take that as him encouraging you to do so. But at the same time, he buys you bulletproof clothing, provides you with backup, puts a tracker in your watch and on your car, and moves you into an apartment in probably the most secure building in Trenton."

"He does his best at keeping me safe and, since he doesn't regularly ask me not to retrieve skips, when he does it packs a punch and I tend not to pick up the skips when he is worried."

"How does he react to you picking up skips with Lula? She's not a particularly effective backup person."

"I know, but Ranger's comment is that, for the easy skips, using Lula is fine. For the easy skips and those that we see frequently, Lula is often a hit. She's especially good for the seniors who are just looking for a little excitement in their lives, for people who are happy to hear about her life as a 'ho. Having people who are happy and interested in us is a much nicer experience than bringing in people who are angry at us for capturing them. For those skips who have been arrested for assault or domestic abuse or murder or killing bounty hunters, he prefers to have Rangeman staff pick them up. And to be quite honest, I love capturing skips, but those who are particularly aggressive or violent aren't as fun to capture. There is too much of an element of danger to it, and I've never been a brave person."

Morelli snorted. "You've always been a brave person", he said. "Yes, you feel fear – but isn't that the very definition of a brave person? Someone who feels fear but does it anyway?"

"I guess so." But I smiled, because thinking of myself as a brave person made me feel better about myself.

"What are you planning on telling your mother and grandmother about the baby?"

"Nothing at this point. Ranger's mother knows and we figure that we'll tell the rest of his family when they come just after Christmas. He said that it is fine with him if we tell my parents and everyone in the immediate family tonight. I just don't want to go there, however. I don't want to tell them if I don't have to – especially with not being certain that this baby will make it."

"I guess I can understand that, but I think your family will be far more supportive than you might at first suspect. If nothing else, it gets you out of doing the dishes after dinner."

I smiled. "I don't mind doing the dishes."

Ranger came into the apartment. His shirt was soaked with sweat. "Thanks for staying with Steph", he said to Morelli. "I'm sure you made it a little less boring for her."

"It was good for me to see her as well", said Morelli. "I needed to know that she was okay." He came and gave me a hug, and kissed me on my forehead. "I'll go spend some time with your family. I need to get your grandmother's statement."

"Thanks, Joe."

"Take care of yourself, and I'll try to drop in on Monday to see how you are doing."

I smiled. "Thanks, Joe."

Ranger smiled. "That would be good", he said. "I have to be in the office for part of the time on Monday. I'm interviewing potential contractors for the construction of the new tower, and I have a few other tasks that I need to do with other staff. Perhaps, if you are coming anyway, we can arrange it so that you can stay with Steph while I'm in the office. It will make it less boring for Steph if there is someone here with her keeping her busy."

"We can do that", said Morelli.

"I guess there is no chance that you have to do computer work for a while on Monday, is there?"

"I do. Why?"

"I was wondering whether you would mind doing it from the office here, and keeping Steph company, rather from doing it at your desk at the TPD. It again will cover for those times when I'm not here and will keep Steph company, and it will give Steph something to think about."

Morelli smiled. "I can do that."

Ranger looked relieved. "Thank you", he said. "It means a lot to me that you would fill in like this. Send me times when you'd be able to be here, and I'll rearrange my day accordingly."

They walked out to the front hall, and seconds later I heard Ranger wish Morelli a good night and shut the door. He walked through to the den again. "I need a shower."

"Funnily enough, I need a shower as well", I said with a smile.

Ranger laughed. "This will be a shower only", he said. "We aren't allowed to have more than a shower for the next week at least."

"The doctor said no sex, but he didn't say no oral sex."

"Sex implies all forms of sex – oral, penetrative, whatever."

I pouted. "Does it exclude kissing and hugging as well?"

"No", said Ranger. "I certainly hope not. Because I can go without intercourse. I can go without oral sex. I went without both those things when you were going out with Morelli. But I absolutely refuse to go without kissing and hugging."

"Thank God."


	23. Chapter 23

Ranger pulled up in front of my parents' house just as a Rangeman vehicle pulled away from the curb. I chuckled to myself and shook my head. Ranger would always take care of me. Ranger's lip quirked up. "I didn't want you walking", he said, "and somehow I didn't think you wanted me to carry you."

I shuddered. "No", I said, "you're right. Carrying me would be bad." I looked in front of me, and Morelli's car was still there. "Poor Joe", I said. "He looks like he got roped into dinner tonight."

"Won't that make things awfully uncomfortable for him? After all, I know that he's happy for us, but he doesn't need his face rubbed in it."

"That's why I said 'poor Joe'."

Ranger turned off the car. "At least he was forewarned as to the reason behind tonight's dinner. If he accepted a dinner invitation, it was with the previous knowledge regarding what was happening."

"That's true. Knowing what was about to happen, he could have always said no, couldn't he?"

"Yes, he could have. He might have just wanted to normalize things, and to show that the three of us are still friends."

"I know that he isn't your most favorite person. Now that you are getting to know him better, do you like him more?"

Ranger smiled. "Now that he isn't going out with you, I like him more. Honestly, I don't like his temper but I can see how he really tries to overcome it. I have a lot of respect for him. He's a good person and a good cop. He's a good friend of yours. Will he ever become my closest friend? No, you and Tank are. But I like him as a person and I like him as a friend, and the more I know him the more I like him. I am glad that he's the person who was selected to be our liaison with the TPD. I'm happy that he's one of your closest friends. And if he feels up to being part of the family function tonight, I'm happy that he is there to celebrate with us." He leaned over and kissed me, then said, "let's rescue him."

I smiled. I was happy to know that Ranger liked Morelli. Because, like Tank and I were Ranger's best friends, Morelli and Ranger were mine. It was important to me that the two of them got along together.

We left the car and walked up to the house. We could hear Lisa and Victoria fighting over a doll, Mary Alice running around the house neighing, and Angie yelling at them to be quiet and that she was trying to read. Edmund was wailing.

We walked in and my father looked at us with a 'help me' expression on his face. I walked over to him and gave him a hug and a kiss. "They're driving me nuts", he said in a whisper that I had to strain to hear over the sound of the kids.

I smiled at him in commiseration, went over to the two toddlers, took the doll that was being fought over away and gave two other dolls to Victoria and Lisa. "This doll has to go to bed for a sleep", I said. "She's tired from having two girls fighting over her." I don't think either Victoria or Lisa understood, but they stopped crying and started playing with their new dolls, so I guess it didn't matter. I turned to Mary Alice. "Hey, horsie", I said. Mary Alice came galloping over. "If you want some oats and hay for dinner tonight, you might want to come out of the fields and into the stable. And you know what you have to be in a stable?"

"What?" said Mary Alice.

"You have to be quiet and you can't run around. There isn't enough room in a stable for a horse to run around, and it would scare the other horses if one horse was particularly loud."

"Okay, Auntie Stephanie." She went to the toy box in the corner and removed a Barbie-sized horse and proceeded to play with it.

Edmund's wailing stopped, and I knew that Ranger had taken him from whoever had been rocking him. For some reason, Edmund loved Ranger and responded well to him. Ranger could get him to stop crying faster than anyone else. I had to say that I agreed with Edmund's reaction and could only hope that our baby had the same reaction to its father.

Assuming I was able to carry the baby to term. A wave of sadness washed over me, and I blinked back tears.

I turned to Angie. "What are you reading?"

"These are good stories, Auntie Steph. It's a whole series of books about an amateur detective who is really a nurse. In this story, she works in a children's boarding school. Do you think it would be fun to be a detective?"

"I think it's like anything else. It would have its good points", I said, "but it would have its bad points as well. However, if you wanted to be a detective you should talk to Joe. He's a detective and could tell you all about it. I thought you wanted to be a writer?"

"I do, but I thought I could do it in my spare time and be a detective to bring in money."

"That's a good idea. Writing, from what I can see, is very rewarding but is very hard to make money at. There's an old joke: what's the difference between a park bench and a writer?"

"What?"

"A park bench can support a family of four."

Angie smiled.

"There is money in writing, but you have to be very lucky and very good. I know that you are good, but only time will tell whether you are lucky. However, in the meantime, it is good to have a backup plan in case your writing doesn't work out."

"That makes sense. I think I'd like to be a detective."

"You listen well, see a lot that other people don't see, and you have a great sense when people are lying to you. You'd be a good detective."

Angie smiled.

I kissed her on her head and got off the couch to walk to the kitchen. As I passed my father, he grinned in relief. "Thank you", he said. "I was wondering whether I'd have to fake a call from one of my regular cab fares to get me out of this mess."

I smiled and kissed him on his cheek again. "Any time", I said.

I walked into the kitchen and Ranger was standing near the back door, swaying like a slow-moving metronome as he soothed Edmund. Morelli was sitting at the table but, when I came in, he moved and told me to get off my feet. I smiled at him gratefully. He went to stand out of the way in the door between the kitchen and the dining room, and he leaned against the frame. Albert was sitting at the table sharing a tray of appetizers with Valerie, and Valerie was guzzling a glass of wine. "It's hard losing weight", he said. "Valerie and I gained a bit of weight with Edmund. I think I gained more than Valerie. She gained a bit, but she lost a lot when Edmund was born. He counted for eight pounds of it. I told her that I would have liked to have lost eight pounds so easily."

"Easily!" said Val. "Shooting a watermelon through a hole the size of a baseball is not easy."

"No, of course not, sweetums. I could tell it was hard. Your face went all red like Edmund when he is pooping his diaper and you screamed at me a few times. I know you didn't mean it though. The nurse told me that you didn't really mean it when you called me a low-life, scum-sucking asshole, and that you didn't really have questions about my parentage. I tried to tell you that I had a father, but you didn't want to hear that then."

She took another slug of her wine. "I know that you're not a bastard."

"My mother isn't a dog either."

My mother got a call, and my grandmother took over at the stove. "How are you feeling, Grandma?" I said.

"Better, thanks", said my grandmother. "I always wondered what it would be like to be jacked up on drugs. That the phrase you use, isn't it? Jacked up? I always wondered what it would be like."

"And what did you think of it?"" I asked.

"It wasn't nearly as much fun as I thought it would be. I think I like having my thoughts clear, and your thoughts aren't clear when you're on drugs."

"That's true", said Morelli. "Drugs are never the way to go."

"I was thinking that I should offer my services to the funeral home", said Albert. "Things are a little slow around the office, and the funeral home could be a good client."

"That might not be the best idea", said Morelli. "They will lose, no matter what the lawyer representing them does. I don't know if you want to be associated with a loser."

"I would just like to be associated with someone", said Albert. "Now that you aren't going out with Stephanie any longer, there isn't the conflict of interest that there would be otherwise."

"That's true", said Morelli, "but wouldn't it be better for you to market yourself more effectively?"

"How could I do that?"

There was a silence around the kitchen as everyone tried to think about what to say. Valerie drank down the rest of her glass of wine and poured herself another. The stove buzzed and everyone jumped to attention. My mother hung up the phone and hustled into the kitchen. She looked stressed though, and there were tears in her eyes.

We all helped get dinner on the table. When our dinner was served and we'd said grace, my mother looked at me. "I thought you were working in the office last night."

"I was", I said. I took a mouthful of the roast ham, chewed and swallowed. It stayed down.

"Why are you lying to me?"

"I'm not lying to you", I said. I ate a mouthful of scalloped potatoes. "I really was working last night at the office. I worked until about one."

"You're lying to me. I just got a call from Wendy Wynn who heard from Ellen Grady who heard from Zoe Babinska – you know her daughter works in the hospital – who said that her daughter saw you in the hospital early this morning. She said that you were gushing blood and she didn't know why they released you. You promised me that if anything major ever happened again that you would tell me what was going on before I heard about it through the grapevine." I put my fork and knife down, no longer hungry, and grabbed Ranger's hand.

She turned to Ranger as she tossed back her whiskey. "How could you let her get hurt? I thought she was safe working in your office. You're engaged now. Get her pregnant. This will be the only way that she will be safe. You need to put babies in her, make her stay home. Do your job. You have a child. I know that you are capable. Frank, tell Steph that she needs to stay at home and have babies. Tell her that this isn't good enough. She needs children. She needs to be like Valerie. Valerie has five. She isn't being sent to the hospital in the middle of the night. I can't live like this. Ma, tell Stephanie that she needs to have babies."

"Another great-grandchild would be real nice", said Grandma.

"It would be nice for my children to have a cousin", said Val. Her words were slightly slurred and her eyes were looking a little glassy.

"See? Everyone agrees with me. You need to have babies and stop your job. What is wrong with that? What do you have against babies?"

"Yeah", said Valerie. "What do you have against babies? Mine are the best thing in my life. You should have kids. You will love them. The minute you hold them in your arms it is like a miracle happens. They become your child, and you'd do anything for them."

"I…" I said in a strangled voice as Ranger squeezed my hand in support.

"Val is right", said my mother. "I know you say that you don't think that you'd like babies, but you'd like them if you had them. They are the best thing in the world."

Tears started to roll down my face.

My mom turned to Ranger. "What is wrong with you? How can you let her run around and put herself in danger? You need to put your foot down and make her stay at home. You need to give her babies. It's just unnatural for her to not have babies. She's a woman, isn't she? She needs to have babies or she will regret it when she is older. That's the first point. And going out to capture skips when she should be at home, in bed, sleeping? That isn't good enough. She needs to stop capturing skips. She needs babies to keep her at home."

I squeezed Ranger's hand once and stood. I held my head high and tried to ignore the way the tears were making my vision blurry or the way the snot was running down my face. "Mom, the reason I was in the hospital last night was because I'm two months pregnant and I started to bleed. We weren't going to tell anyone until I was three months along. I might be losing the baby and my life may be in danger, but hey – you got your wish. I'm pregnant. I haven't chased skips for over a month. And I have proved that I am an unnatural woman since I might not be able to carry the baby successfully." I turned to Ranger. "I want to go home. I'm not hungry any longer."

I turned and with a final look at my mother's and grandmother's and Val's gaping faces, I left the table. My father grabbed hold of my hand as I passed, and he squeezed it gently in support. He pulled me down, kissed my cheek, and said, "take care of yourself." I smiled my thanks at him.

Ranger and Joe followed me to the front door. I put on my shoes, shrugged on my coat, and gave Joe a hug. "Go", he said, "get off your feet and take care of yourself. I'll do damage control here."

My mother called out for me to stop, and I ignored her. "Thanks, Joe", I said. Ranger shook his hand before we walked out of the house. He helped me into the car as my mother came running out of the house. She ran down to the car and just before she wrenched the door open Ranger stopped her.

"Let everyone's emotions settle", he said to her. "Stephanie is supposed to be avoiding stress and staying off her feet. The only reason we are here tonight is because she didn't want to upset you, and she knew that you were so pro-having babies that it would upset you to know that she might be miscarrying. She knew that a miscarriage would make her seem like less in your eyes, and she wanted to prove that she was strong, that she was worthy."

"But…" said my mother.

"Steph is upset and has been since she first started to bleed. Let her calm down, and perhaps tomorrow you can talk to her and try again." He patted her on her shoulder. "I'm taking Stephanie home now. I hope you have a good evening."

As Ranger pulled away from the curb, I looked in the side mirror and I could see my mother staring after us, tears rolling down her white face. I started to cry harder.

"I'm sorry", I said. "That had to be the dinner from hell."

"It's certainly up there", said Ranger. "I just feel bad for Morelli. He's the one that has been tasked with smoothing it out."


	24. Chapter 24

Ranger went down to the break room and grabbed a couple of sandwiches and when he got back, he heated up some chicken broth that Ella had left one other time in the freezer. He decanted it into a couple of cups, and carried the drinks and sandwiches through to the den on a tray. While he was gone, I washed my face, changed my pad – the bleeding was definitely slowing down – and put on a pair of flannel sleep pants, a shirt of Ranger's, and his housecoat. By the time he was walking through from the kitchen to the den, I had turned on the fireplace and was reclined on the sofa with my feet up.

I had just finished my sandwich and half of my soup when Ella came in with a large brownie on a plate and a mound of whipped cream overtop, and she carried it through to the den with a fork. "I'm sorry I took a few minutes", she said. "I wanted to heat the brownie before I came up."

I smiled. "Hot damn, this day just got better."

Ella laughed. "I ran into Ranger in the break room as I was cleaning up dinner. I take it that dinner at your parents' didn't go well?"

"That's the understatement of the year", I said. "The last time I took the chance of missing dinner was when I found out that my ex, Morelli, had been seen leaving the hotel room of a former girlfriend, someone I knew who wanted to change the 'former' description on their relationship, and I had decided that I didn't want to eat at the same table as him. It was a bad scene, although it wasn't as bad as today's." I finished my soup and sighed. Ella made the best chicken broth that I had ever tasted.

"How are you feeling?"

"Honestly? Tired and strung out. It's been an emotional few days, and I feel like I just need a break."

"If there is anything I can do, just let me know."

"Thanks, Ella."

She came over and gave me a hug, and then left for the evening. I turned to Ranger. "She is such a nice person."

"Yes, she is. She is very worried about you, and said, when I have to be in the office this week, she'd like to come and see you for a bit. I was thinking that, when she came up to clean the apartment, we could ask her to sit with you instead for the time she would have spent cleaning."

"That would be nice. I always like spending time with her."

"And she always likes spending time with you. While she thinks of me like a son, she thinks of you like a beloved daughter."

"What do you do for Christmas for them?"

"It's when I usually hand out the bonuses for staff. For Ella and Luis and Tank, and now Nate and Bob, their Christmas bonus will be five percent of their salary. For the rest of the staff, it is about two and a half percent."

"That's generous, but do you think that we could get Ella and Luis a present as well? I'd like to get them something personal, and maybe a Christmas flower arrangement."

"That's a good idea. I haven't done that in the past because I never know what to get."

"If you let me sit up, I'll do some online shopping this week. I promise that I'll stay off my feet, but I could do some work. I could even do some work for the office. The bleeding hasn't stopped, but it has significantly slowed down."

Ranger thought about that for a moment, and I didn't say anything. I had made my pitch, and no amount of negotiation or finagling would make my case any stronger.

"I will agree to that, as long as you lie down for half the time. You could be sleeping or you could be watching television or you could be visiting with Joe. Whatever you do, the deal is that you have to lie flat on your back for half the day."

I smiled. I could work with that.

I almost finished the brownie before my stomach rebelled. I put the remainder on the table, but seconds later I got up and ran for the bathroom. Ranger put the rest of my brownie in the fridge as I emptied my stomach, and I moaned as I finished. Ranger came through and wet a washcloth and, when I had finished washing my face and brushing my teeth, he picked me up and carried me to bed, pulled down the duvet and lay me down. He turned off the fireplace and shut the lights off in the den, finished up in the bathroom himself, and came to bed. He flipped me over and cuddled in, his arm over my waist and his hand up and holding my breast, and I relaxed in the familiar position. "If you wake up in the morning and I'm not here", he said, "it's because I'm in the gym. I did a short workout today, and I'd prefer to have a longer one tomorrow."

"Okay."

"I'll take my phone with me. If you have any problems at all, I want you to call me."

"Okay." I yawned.

"Have a good sleep, babe."

"You too." Seconds later, I was asleep.

The next morning, I woke up as Ranger left for the gym, but I barely registered his departure before I settled into sleep again. I woke up four hours later. As was his usual Sunday morning habit as he waited for me to wake up, he spent the time reviewing and approving time sheets. I got up and used the facilities in the bathroom, and padded through to the den. "How are you?" asked Ranger. He pushed his chair back from the desk and I sat down on his lap.

"Better rested but quite nauseous", I said. I cuddled into his shoulder, and he rhythmically smoothed my hair away from my face.

He kissed me on the top of my head. "How about you have some pretzels?" said Ranger. "Ella left a new bag for you on the counter in the kitchen, and she left another bottle of ginger ale uncapped in the fridge. She thought you might like that better than anything else for breakfast."

"Have you eaten?"

"I stopped in the break room and grabbed some food this morning, and I sent a text to Ella to let her know that I would be doing that. I thought you might prefer not to have the food smells."

"Thank you."

Ranger's eyes softened and he thought about smiling.

"I sent a note to Joe letting him know that you would be available to help him do computer searches for about three hours a day", said Ranger, "if he wanted to come here and the two of you could work together on the searches. He seemed grateful, said you were better at doing searches than he was, and said he'd be here at one on Monday. This gives you a good chance to sleep in before you have to get up for the day."

"Thanks."

"I talked to your mother today. She said that she'd like to come over later today to apologize."

I froze. "I don't know if I want to see her."

"I understand, but it might be a good idea to let her have her say. For all your differences, you are quite close to her and you will need her especially during the first few weeks after the baby is born."

"What happens if I miscarry the baby?"

"Then you will need your mother then as well. I think you should give her the chance to apologize."

I shut my eyes and sighed as I purposely relaxed my muscles. "Okay", I said.

"She was planning on skipping church so that she could see you as soon as you wake up."

"She's skipping church for me?" I sat back and looked at him in shock.

"Apologizing is important to her."

"Let me have a shower, and I'll be ready to see her in about half an hour. If she sees me early enough, she might be able to make church after all."

Ranger smiled. "I'll let her know. I think she was planning on bringing a piece of pineapple upside-down cake for you."

I smiled. "With the way I'm feeling, it won't sit very well."

"I was doing some research this morning. You have a good chance that the baby is fine. First of all, you are nauseous, and it has been proven that people who experience morning sickness during their pregnancy have a higher chance of the babies being fine than mothers who don't experience morning sickness."

"You mean that there is a good reason for me to be sick?"

"There are definitely benefits. Apparently, the risk of miscarrying if you experience morning sickness is a third of the chance of miscarrying if you aren't. Additionally, it doesn't appear as though you would experience morning sickness if the baby wasn't alive."

"Okay."

"I also found out that, at eight weeks, only 7.4 percent of babies are miscarried at this stage of the pregnancy. The odds are with you that the baby is fine. Your breasts are still sensitive as well, aren't they?"

"Yes, they are."

"There you go. That's another indication that the baby is still hanging in there. Sometimes you have to look for the small signs."

"Do you think that I'm an unnatural woman?" I said softly. I could feel Ranger tense. He tucked me under his chin again and he kissed the top of my head.

"There is nothing unnatural about you", he said. "Yes, you don't go all ga-ga over babies, but that's okay. I don't either. Doesn't mean that I don't like them. It just means that they aren't the be-all and end-all for me. I like people, but I like to judge people for who they are, and it is hard to get to know a baby's personality when they are so small and cannot talk or make their personalities known. That's the first point.

"The second point is that, just because you have other things in your life, it doesn't mean you won't be a good mother. I would argue, actually, that it would make you a better mother as you will have more things in your life than just the baby. It would take the pressure off the baby to be perfect. Kids are smart, and they would know if the parent has nothing in their lives to be proud of – and they would try to provide that sense of pride to their parents. I can see that in Angie. She tries so hard to be perfect for her mother that she hasn't learned that it's okay to make mistakes. Mary Alice has gone the other way. She can't be perfect, so she pretends to be a horse and tries to be the best horse that she can be. They are good kids but they are each, in their own way, trying to justify their mother's pride." He paused, and then said quietly, "I think you'll be a better mother to your kids than Val is to hers. You'll love your kids just as much and will keep them safe just as much, but you'll teach them to find happiness within themselves rather than through another person and that's a very valuable lesson to teach."

"My mother wanted to become a nurse, but gave up her dreams to stay at home and look after us."

"See, that's the problem with staying at home with your kids. It can work well, but I think it works best if the mother has something in her life, whether it is volunteer work or a hobby, in addition to looking after her kids. Just like working outside the home could work well, as long as you take time out of your day to spend time with your child, to take the time to listen to your child and make sure they know that you care deeply about them. If you give up your dreams, I honestly think it puts too much pressure on your kids to conform to a certain standard, and that standard may not make use of their different strengths and personalities. For example, the standard your mother wanted you to live up to was one of the traditional route in life, and trying to live up to that standard was the reason you got married to Dickie – and that was a disaster. You are such a talented person, such a valuable person, and you can't see it because you are trying to live up to a standard that is impossible for you to live up to. It isn't impossible because you can't do it, but it is impossible because it doesn't make use of your skills and talents and, if you ignore that part of you, you will be unhappy. That's why I'm not asking you to quit after our kids are born and instead am encouraging you to consider hiring a nanny. I don't want you unhappy, and I think that an unhappy parent makes an unhappy child."

"I can see that. What does Celia do?" Celia was Ranger's sister and had two little boys.

Ranger smiled. "Celia doesn't advertise this, but she writes and illustrates children's books. She says she is qualified to create them based on the number of books that she has read to her own kids. Although she has never been published, her books are excellent and she's a talented artist. I hope, actually, that she might do some pictures for the wall of our baby's room when she knows that we are expecting. I would love to have some of her artwork up on the wall."


	25. Chapter 25

My mother showed up forty-five minutes later. I'd had a chance to shower, pull my wet hair back into a ponytail, get dressed and have a couple of handfuls of pretzels and half a bottle of ginger ale before she got there.

As per my request, Ranger stayed for the visit. He had suggested that it might be something that would be more appropriate for me to do solo but I used my puppy-dog eyes and he ended up agreeing to stay. In the future, I would have to remember how I had done that. It could be a very useful trick to have.

Ranger went down to the reception desk and signed my mother in, and escorted her up to the seventh floor. He held the door as she entered, and led her back to the den, where I was lying down and watching the fire dance. I had turned off the television while Ranger was retrieving my mother.

"Hey", I said to my mom as she came through. She came over and gave me a hug and a kiss. "How are you?"

"Okay. No, that's not right. I feel terrible", said my mother. "Joe told me that you felt like a lesser person because you didn't have kids, and that you were afraid to tell me about the bleeding in case I looked down on you. I never meant to infer you were a lesser person because you didn't have kids. I have never thought that. There are only two reasons that I have pushed you to have kids. One is because you have brought me so much pleasure over the years, and I wanted you to experience that pleasure yourself. The other reason is that I thought, if you had children, that you wouldn't be in danger any longer. Joe told me that you haven't been chasing skips for over a month."

"That's true, but you realize that, if I go out skip tracing with Rangeman, I'm in no more danger than I would be walking down the street."

"I know, but you have had so many things happen to you when you are out skip tracing."

"And there have been so many things that happened to me when I wasn't as well. For example, a garbage truck wouldn't have fallen on my car if I hadn't been looking for Uncle Fred's money. I wouldn't have been shot in the leg if I hadn't been going out with Joe. I wouldn't have been targeted if I hadn't picked up that picture on my way back from Hawaii on my last vacation. I wouldn't have been abducted by Julie's kidnapper if I wasn't friends with Ranger. All sorts of things have happened to me that have nothing to do with skips. However, I have been protected and saved from their impacts because I have the friends that I have. Those friends make me actually safer."

"Joe said that you're not very good at skip tracing."

"Has he said that recently?" I asked. My body had tensed up, and I guessed Ranger could tell from where I was semi-reclined and leaning against him. His arm came down over my shoulder until his hand was resting on my abdomen, and he angled his head down and kissed me on the top of mine in support.

"No, but he told me that a few years ago."

"I'd like to think that I am a much better bounty hunter now."

"Steph is actually an excellent bounty hunter", said Ranger quietly, and I could tell for the softness of his voice that he was irritated. "She has a very high capture rate. Part of the reason she is so good is because she thoroughly researches each felon. Her research that she does is top-notch, and she takes the time to look at all aspects of the felon's life. She is usually able to identify exactly where the felon can be found. This cuts down the time that she has to spend in surveillance. Personally, I'm not as good at the research and have to spend more time doing surveillance. However, like Stephanie, I always get the criminal."

"Ranger is the best bounty hunter in the business and perhaps in the country", I said. "He always gets his felon, and he picks him or her up on his first try. Lula and I are more bumblers. We also get our felon, but it's not uncommon for us to have to go a few times before we can pick him up."

Ranger kissed the top of my head again. "Don't sell yourself short, babe. Without your research, Rangeman wouldn't be able to pick them up."

"Why can't you just do research?" asked my mother.

"That's what I'm doing right now, and Ranger keeps adding more companies to our roster which means that I have a lot of research work to do. But to tell you the truth, I really miss skip tracing. I hate being chained to a desk and although I like research okay, skip tracing satisfies my desire to act and do something. Research satisfies my nosy tendencies. When I am doing skip tracing, I work about one and a half to two days a week capturing skips and the rest of the week researching. Not all those skips are caught with Lula. We have a few regulars that we do together, and we do the easy ones together. But the harder ones that I capture are done with Rangeman staff and, if I suspect that they won't come easily, I send Rangeman staff in without me to capture them. I like having the two jobs. Having both of them is the best possible situation for me."

"By having Steph only do the lower bond skips and Rangeman do the higher bond skips", said Ranger, "it is safer for Steph but still gets her out of the office. There is very little risk to her, no more risk than going to the grocery store to pick up a few items for dinner. Steph knows that Rangeman is always available to pick up skips, whether that is because she perceives they might be a problem, whether the stakeout is taking more time than she has available, or whether the skip is known to have violent tendencies. In the past, she has picked up everyone other than the most violent skips. Those I have always picked up for her. The Rangeman team likes filling in for her, as it gives them something different and interesting to do with their day."

"So you're only doing research now. What will you do when the baby is born?"

"For the first year, I will probably work from home and do only research. This will allow me to breastfeed. However, after the first year I will probably do what I've been doing for the last few months. I'll work part-time doing research and part-time capturing skips. I don't know yet how I will balance the two different needs, as I currently work about sixty hours a week and I don't perceive that I'll be able to do that when the baby is born. However, if I have my choice, I'd like to continue to do some of the regulars."

"You have people who regularly don't go to jail?"

"There are some that don't go to jail just so that Lula and I pick them up. They like our stories, and for the regulars I often take them out for McDonald's on the way to the precinct. For some, especially seniors in nursing homes, that might be the only time they get out of the home for the month. They look forward to Lula and me picking them up. I know the regulars by name and they know me. Those are the kind of skips that I was picking up over the last few months, and those are the kind of skips that I want to continue picking up. As I said, though, I don't know how I'll balance the two jobs."

"I forgot to tell you yesterday", said Ranger, "but I talked to Miguel and offered him a raise if he took on research for half the day and patrol for the other half. He sounded quite happy with that arrangement. He said that doing analysis like you've been doing makes the job more interesting and, although he prefers doing patrol, doing research and analysis is more fun than doing monitoring. He'll be joining you when the staffing changes take place in a week."

"That's great", I said. "It means a lot to me that he's willing to take the work on. I find that I work a lot of hours, and that work is just increasing more and more over time. While I don't mind doing it now, I won't want to work overtime after the baby is born."

"I'm not happy having you work overtime now either", said Ranger. "You're getting tired so much more easily now, and I'd rather see you sleeping more than you currently do."

"I sleep almost nine hours at night."

"Yes, and with the pregnancy I think you need ten, and I suspect what would be better would be for you to sleep nine, and then have an hour nap mid-afternoon."

"I don't have time to have a nap each afternoon."

"That's why we're getting Miguel to help. You are currently working sixty-hour weeks. I'd like to see you working forty-hour weeks with Miguel doing the other twenty hours. That way just as much is getting done, but it isn't all falling on your shoulders."

"What about you? You're working sixty-hour work weeks as well."

"Yes, which is why I'm reorganizing staff so that I have fewer responsibilities. I also want to work only forty hours a week by the time the baby is born."

"So is the baby the reason why you are getting married?" asked my mother.

"No", said Ranger. "I actually had the ring commissioned prior to us finding out that Steph was pregnant. I was just too nervous to ask her. However, I didn't like living with Steph without having any words said between us. I'm not particularly religious, but I want the words anyway. It's important to me and, from what I can tell, it is important to Steph as well."

Mom looked at us and was obviously thinking about what we'd said. "I always perceived Stephanie's job to be dangerous. No one has ever laid it out for me this way before."

"It actually isn't that dangerous", I said, "and the changes that Ranger and I are making are ensuring that it is even less so. I'm sorry that I never made that clearer to you."

My mother nodded once. "I think you will be great parents. You both have a lot of love to share."

"We're looking forward to having this baby", I said. Then I remembered the bleeding and tears came to my eyes.

"Babe", said Ranger. "Don't think about it. You were bleeding less this morning, and you're taking the week off work. You are doing everything you can to protect our baby. I have no doubts that you'll be fine."

I turned my head into his shoulder and kissed his bicep. I could smell Bulgari Green on his skin, and I let the scent comfort me. "It's not whether I'll be fine that I'm worried about", I said. "It's whether the baby will be fine."

Tears came to my mother's eyes. "I'm more worried about you than about a baby", she said. "Were you trying to get pregnant?"

"No", I said. "That's the other reason that we haven't told anyone. We wanted to give us some time to get used to the concept ourselves. Ranger very quickly became comfortable with the concept of having kids. However, for me, it wasn't until I started bleeding that it occurred to me that I really did want this baby. At first I was just stunned, and after a while I was panicking, and now that I'm through that and Ranger and I have calibrated how we view our future life, I actually want this baby. I'm scared, Mom. I'm scared that I'll lose the baby."

"I'm scared too", she said. "Not because of the lost potential of having another grandchild, but because I know it will be hard on you."

I swiped the tears from my face, and Ranger snagged the box of tissues from the table beside him and handed the box to me.

"Where are you planning on having the baby sleep?" said my mother.

Ranger went over our plans to renovate our current apartment, and talked about the floor plan of our new apartment. "We should be in the new apartment sometime within the next year and a half. It will be a bit of a long haul, but the new apartment will be nice and it will be much more accommodating for guests. Like this apartment, we'll be adding many security features. We'll increase the number of security guards on the in the residence as well as in the offices to two staff on each desk on duty at all times. Tank and I have been talking about having the office feed go to a monitor at the reception area, rather than having the control room monitoring it. The control room is struggling to keep up to monitoring all the different feeds, and having one less will be good for it."

"I don't understand", said Mom. "What does it matter how many security guards are on duty?"

"It will mean that one security guard can escort any guests up to our apartment, while the other can staff the desk", said Ranger.

"Will you have the security guard walk guests to the offices then as well?"

"No", said Ranger. "I still want to keep all civilians out of the offices. The only person who has been invited into the offices who doesn't work here has been Morelli, and that's only because he is working with us and is the TPD liaison. We work closely with him, and we look forward to working even more closely with him in the future."

My mother smiled. "You're a good man, Ranger. It's not everyone who would allow their fiancée's ex to continue to have a relationship with her."

"Morelli is a good friend of Stephanie's, and he has proven to be a good friend of Rangeman's as well. Since a lot of the work that Rangeman does with the TPD falls on Stephanie's desk, it only makes sense that Morelli is our contact. I trust him to protect Steph and not ask for the impossible. Stephanie's the kind of person that, if you give her a task that is impossible, she will dig in her heels and get the job done anyway. It would be easy to take advantage of her, because she won't admit defeat. It's what makes her good at her job but also is what makes her open to being exploited. Morelli will be fair about his requests."

My mother nodded. "I can see that", she said. "When she was little, she would dig in her heels about anything she wanted to get done. I always said that she was the most stubborn person I had ever met. Valerie was easy to mold. Stephanie, not so much. I was just glad that Steph was a good kid, because that kind of stubbornness would be very hard to work with if the kid was determined to get into trouble."

Ranger smiled. "I'll bet Stephanie was a cute kid."

My mother smiled. "She was. She was the most loving child I have ever met, but she also had the biggest imagination and the best sense of humor. She was a happy kid and, when she did get mad, she didn't stay mad for long."

"She still is all that", said Ranger. He smiled softly at me.

My mother picked up her purse. "I should let you get back to what you were doing before I came. I appreciate you letting me visit so soon after last night. I don't know if I would have been so accommodating if I had been in your shoes, but I appreciate it. And I am glad that you let me clear the air. The only reason that I wanted you to have kids was to force you not to put yourself in danger anymore. It was always about you.

"When you were little, I used to tell you that a parent had two jobs – to love their kids and to keep them safe. I love you deeply, Steph, and I had perceived that having kids was the only way to keep you safe. It was never about me getting more grandchildren. However, I can now see that you and Ranger are taking steps to ensure your safety, and I am very glad about that. I will be able to go to bed and sleep easy thinking that you are taking yourself out of dangerous situations."

"Even when I go into less dangerous situations", I said, "I am protected more than you might at first realize. For instance, when I go out I am always wearing bulletproof clothing."

"You weren't the other day."

"Actually, I was", I said. "The leather jacket that Ranger got me for my birthday is a bulletproof jacket. I just didn't want to say that in front of Grandma, because it is quite heavy and it wouldn't be a good thing for her to wear. She'd probably topple over from the weight. Ranger also bought me a lighter weight bulletproof jacket for spring and early fall. It saves me from having to wear my bulletproof vest constantly, and since they aren't so obvious I don't mind wearing the new jackets quite the same. Also, Ranger has been teaching me self-defense and how to shoot a gun, and I don't know if Ranger agrees with this, but I feel that I have been improving drastically."

"I'd agree with that", said Ranger. "We have taken the steps to ensure that Stephanie is as safe as she can be, and so she continues to be as safe as she can be."

"Thank God", said my mother. She got to her feet and came over to me, gave me a hug and a kiss. "Take care of yourself, okay? You're my baby, and I couldn't cope if something happened to you."

I kissed her cheek. "I love you, Mom", I said.

My mother pulled back and, with eyes that were suspiciously bright, she said, "I love you too."

Ranger walked my mother to the front door and saw her down to the lobby. When he came back up, he said, "I thought that visit went well. What did you think?"

I thought my brain was full. My view of my mother had taken a drastic turn that morning, and I needed to consider things a bit before I had consolidated my viewpoint. "I think she missed church", I said finally. "She never misses church."

"I guess she thought this was more important."

That was something else to think about.


	26. Chapter 26

Despite Ranger working in the den for the rest of the afternoon and again on the Monday morning, I was thoroughly bored by the time lunch came. I had been good and slept in and then, when I woke up and had a shower, had lain on the sofa until lunch. Although I was frustrated and bored, however, I must have been doing something right. Both Ranger and I were reassured by the fact that the bleeding was no longer period-heavy but rather just a light spotting, and was no longer bright red but rather a reddish brown. That morning, Ranger had made an appointment with my obstetrician for the following day to discuss the bleeding anyway.

Ranger brought up my laptop while he was retrieving our lunches from the assortment that Ella put out, and I gave him a grin as he walked into the den with the laptop in hand. He laughed and shook his head. "You know, the problem with you is that you are too smart." I looked at him in shock. After all, I was the person who graduated in the ninety-eighth percentile from college, and was only happy about two things that were associated with that. The first was that I was glad that they didn't post your transcript on the degree. You either had a degree or you didn't, and I luckily had one. The second was that I was glad that neither the bonds office nor Rangeman required me to rely upon my schooling. I didn't need a degree to be a researcher. I just needed a familiarity with and a comfort with computers. And I definitely didn't need a degree to be a bounty hunter. I needed wits and ingenuity and obstinacy, but I didn't need a degree. So the concept that someone thought of me as smart was mindboggling.

Ranger continued talking, not noticing my stupefied silence. "And you have too much energy and curiosity. I know how hard it is for you to remain still and be bored with nothing to do. I appreciate that you are trying as hard as you are to look after yourself."

I smiled slightly. "You're welcome", I said.

"How's your stomach?" said Ranger. He placed the sandwiches on the coffee table beside the laptop.

"It's been better", I said.

"How about some chicken broth? That's supposed to settle your stomach."

I smiled in gratitude, and Ranger left the room to heat up some broth and put it in mugs for us. He carried through the hot broth as I sat up, and passed me a mug. I took a sip and sighed. I didn't know what Ella did to make the broth so good, but it was excellent – and it was exactly what I had wanted to eat.

I only ate a quarter of my sandwich, but I drank all of the broth. I kept down both, which was better than both my breakfast and my dinner the night before.

When I said that I couldn't eat any more, Ranger pulled out a raisin scone and handed it to me. "For your mid-afternoon snack", he said.

I smiled. At one time, in the not-so-distant past, Ranger would bribe me with chocolate bars. And while I know that I like chocolate bars, the raisin scones were really something special and were a far more interesting bribe to me at the moment than a chocolate bar would ever be.

"I'll have to ask Ella to buy me some raisins when she is out grocery shopping next", I said.

"Has Rex eaten all the raisins in the bag in your cupboard?" Ranger is a very healthful eater. I am not. When I moved in, I didn't want to give up eating my staples, essential foods like chocolate hazelnut spread, chocolate-dusted cereal, chocolate bars and, in keeping with the theme, chocolate-covered raisins and chocolate-covered peanuts. I liked chocolate and when I'd moved in I had been going through a withdrawal, especially with not eating any dessert the way that Ranger ate. I was always the person who preferred to eat dessert and would skip the main course if I could. In recognition of how hard I was finding his lack of sugar-laden foods, Ranger arranged for Ella to stock a cupboard for me full of all the junk foods that I liked and craved.

What I had found is that, with Ranger quietly supporting me in my junk food habits but even more supporting me in eating healthily, I had cut way back on eating junk food. Ella was such a good cook and good food was always readily available, which meant that I wasn't filling up on junk so that I didn't have to cook. Before I got pregnant, I had been losing weight. I hadn't noticed it on the scale, but I had noticed it in my clothes and the way that they were fitting. Now that I was eight weeks along, I thought my pants were getting a little tighter. My bra was definitely quite a lot tighter. Personally, I thought that last bit was a good thing, although I wasn't so sure about my pants getting tighter. I didn't want to get as big as Valerie did. She regularly had people asking her if she was expecting triplets, and after a while she just agreed with them. She found it too hard to explain to people that she was addicted to gravy, and I guess I could see why. After all, pouring gravy over ice cream for breakfast was probably a little difficult for people to understand. I hoped that I would be addicted to something like carrots. It wasn't that I particularly liked carrots per se. I just figured that, if carrots were filled with Vitamin A, they might ensure that our baby had good eyesight.

"I shared the raisins with Rex", I said, "but I had a craving for raisins. I asked Rex and he said that he didn't care whether I had a few. Only a few turned into a handful, which turned into several handfuls, and here we are. Rex has no more raisins."

Ranger smiled. "I'm sure he didn't mind."

"Well, he can't have them back. It's too late."

"Is that why you like raisin scones so much? Because they have raisins in them?"

"I don't know. I just know that they smell good, they taste good, and they sit well in my stomach."

"Did the raisins also sit well?"

"Surprisingly, they sat better than many things."

"Is there anything else you crave, other than raisins?"

"Maybe one of those big, baseball-sized oranges? I'm usually just trying to keep whatever I ate down, but an orange would taste good. I might not even mind that one coming back up again." Ranger smiled as he pulled out his phone. "You don't have to tell Ella. If you tell Ella, she will make a special trip out just for me, and I don't want her doing that."

"I know, but she will like it." When I went to protest again, he said, "look, would you like an orange or not?"

"Yes", I said.

"Then let Ella spoil you. You don't ask for much, so let her give you something that you'd really like. She really does look on you as a daughter, and she'll be happy that she was able to help you."

I smiled. I looked on her as another mother as well.

There was a knock on the front door, and Ranger answered to find Morelli. Joe came in and shook his hand, then walked into the den, came over to me and gave me a hug and a kiss. I smiled. I was tired of sitting down and with Morelli coming, I could now start my allotted three hours of sitting-up time. I opened my laptop, sat on the sofa and stretched out my legs, and put the computer on my knee. Ranger set Joe up on his computer as I started doing the searches into Jennifer Harris. Ranger smiled slightly as he gave me a kiss. "Don't overdo it", he said. "And enjoy your time sitting up."

"I have my legs up, so that's good, isn't it?"

Ranger's eyes softened. "Yes, it is." He gave me another kiss, thanked Joe for coming in to work with me, and left the room.

"I was thinking that I'd search up the information and send it to the printer behind you, and leave you to do the analysis", I said. "I think that would be the most expedient way of doing the research."

Joe agreed, so I pulled up the research on Jennifer Harris that I had done on Friday night, and started to delve into it further. She had been getting rather large deposits of money into her account through an ATM. The location of the ATM was around Joss's and Otis's home. The deposits were irregular and made in cash, but Joss and Otis had similar deposits in their accounts that were made around the same time.

"So we have three crimes that were completed", I said. "The first is the stealing of the ashes. You have spoken to the crematorium, and Otis was on duty while the ashes were stolen. Since he was the only person on duty while the victims were cremated, it makes sense that he was the person who stole the ashes."

"He was off duty this weekend", said Joe, "but I was able to get a copy of the hours that he worked. With each stolen victim, he was the only person on duty and was the only person to be responsible for packaging the ashes up and preparing them to be sent to the funeral home."

"So that implicates Otis."

"Yes, it does. It's not a slam-dunk but it is enough to ask for a search warrant on Otis's and Joss's home to see if we can find traces of the ashes. There was another victim stolen yesterday, so they should still have ashes there. I'll try to get a search warrant tonight, and go in after dinner to see if we can see anything useful. Finding traces of the ashes will make it a slam-dunk."

"What would be even better would be if one of the two, either Joss or Otis or both, admitted to the crime."

"That's true."

"The second case is the marketing of the ashes as drugs."

"Vice has someone going out and trying to purchase some of the 'drug' off the street so they can analyze it", said Joe.

"The other crime, which was the surprise one, was the funeral home's tendency to drug visitors. Jennifer is angry about it but still does it, and the other people just look on it as a marketing ploy."

"That's right. There was a funeral happening there this afternoon, and an officer is going undercover to get a sample of the juice to see if it is still being drugged with bath salts. I also have the statement that the doctor made, the statements Ranger and Eduardo and Hal and Hector gave based on what they heard, and the statements that you and your grandmother made. That one is a slam-dunk, but we are hoping to make it even more airtight by getting the sample of the juice.

"It's partly a slam-dunk because I spoke to Jennifer this morning", said Morelli, "and she told me that she'd work with me in exchange for immunity. I couldn't promise that to her, but I did say that I would make a note of the fact that she had cooperated and that would look good for her. She told me that the bath salts are brought into the home in a casket, and they are used to drug the guests. However, she said that they are also sold to people on the street. The funeral home has a thriving business, and she gave us names of the people involved. She said her boyfriend bought some of the bath salts and, after taking them, died from an overdose the next morning. Apparently she had been angry at the funeral home ever since, and had asked the funeral home to stop their drug trafficking. The owner of the funeral home refused. He said the funeral services that he offers are a cut rate and he can only afford to offer them at such a low cost since he is subsidizing his service with the drug trafficking. Jennifer apparently told him that he was killing people, and he said that killing people was alright with him – that he was just creating business. She is furious with him and said she wants to see him go down."

"I don't blame her."

"She said that she and Otis are the two people who have been calling in the tips to the anonymous line, and since she brought it up I think it actually was her. She said that she and Otis and Joss have been trying to figure out how to avenge Curtis's death."

"So Otis's and Jennifer's revenge is in shutting down the drug trafficking and giving the funeral home a bad reputation. Joss, however, is in it for the money and marketing the ashes?"

"That's right. This makes it an interesting case, since we can't charge him for drug trafficking. What is he selling isn't a drug. However, it could loosely be considered a body part. It isn't, however, an organ so he can't be charge with organ trafficking. The victims aren't alive, so he can't be charged with human trafficking. I don't know what they'll be charged with. I have the DA looking into it. He's supposed to get back to me by the end of the afternoon. Jennifer is in custody so that she can't warn Otis or Joss. She'll be able to post bail as of tonight or tomorrow. We also have the other funeral home director and the funeral home owner being arrested this afternoon. They should make bail tonight or tomorrow as well."

"So what do you need me to research?"

"I have another name that Jennifer mentioned. Samuel Denton. He apparently is the person who is supplying the funeral home with drugs. It would be great if you can look into him. I need to see if we can track his involvement and, even better, if we can figure out where to find him."

I smiled. "I would be happy to."

Morelli and I worked on tracking Samuel Denton's information until about four. There were all sorts of other avenues to chase down, and I told Morelli that I might be able to do it the next day, depending upon what the obstetrician said. Morelli was happy with what we had already found out, and he wished me luck at the doctor's the next day and left to try to get his search warrant before the judge went home. After Joe had left, I tried to decide as to what I wanted to do more – work more on Samuel Denton's file, do some online shopping, or have a nap. The nap won, and by the time Ranger returned to the apartment I was sound asleep.


	27. Chapter 27

The next day dawned bright and clear, and shortly after breakfast – pretzels for me again – we headed over to the obstetrician's. The bleeding had slowed down even more, so that there was just a trace of blood noticeable. I took that to be a good sign.

I was nervous going to the doctor's. While I reassured myself that I had stopped bleeding and my breasts were still sensitive and I was still nauseous, I remained concerned that he would tell me that something was wrong. Now that I had decided that I wanted the baby, I really wanted the baby. I had been sitting on the fence, unsure that a baby was what I wanted. But wasn't that always the way? You could be unsure about something but when that thing is taken away from you, you become desperately sure about things. This was no different. When I thought I was losing the baby I jumped on board with the concept and decided that a baby was exactly what I wanted. I was now happy about the pregnancy. Worried, but happy.

As we drove to the doctor's office, Ranger captured my hand and squeezed gently. "It's going to be fine", he said.

"How can you be sure of that?"

"I have faith." He lifted my hand and kissed my fingers before placing my hand on his thigh. He downshifted as he turned a corner. "I was thinking that we'll have to get rid of this car." We were in Ranger's Porsche 911 Turbo. "It won't take a car seat."

"You love this car."

"I can drive the Cayenne. I love that car as well."

"Would you replace this car with something else?"

"I was thinking a Honda Odyssey for you to drive."

"A minivan?" I tried to keep the screeching from my voice, but I don't think that I was successful. Ranger, I could tell, was thinking about smiling.

I snatched my hand back and crossed my arms and looked out the window. "I'm not driving a goddamned minivan", I said. "I'm willing to give up skip tracing for almost two years. I'm willing to shoot a watermelon out a hole the size of a baseball. I'm willing to undergo the heartburn and the weight gain and the backaches and the sleepless nights. I'm willing to change runny diapers and wipe snotty noses. I am not, I repeat, I am _not_ willing to drive a minivan."

"It's very practical", said Ranger.

"It doesn't suit my aesthetic. If you think they are so great, you drive one."

"Uh-uh. Not me. They call them mom-obiles for a reason. The last I checked, I'm not the mother. I have this thing called a penis, and that makes me exempt from driving a mom-obile."

"Keep this up and you'll be castrated, in which case you'll be no longer exempt."

Ranger laughed.

"You wouldn't really ask me to drive a minivan, would you?" I asked.

Ranger smiled. "Not at all, but it was worth suggesting it just to see your reaction."

"I'm happy driving the Explorer."

"I'm planning on getting you a new car, but I have to do some investigating to try to identify those with the best safety ratings. Would you prefer a sedan or a SUV?"

"Probably an SUV, as long as it is something I can take a car seat in and out of easily. I'll need the back seat when I go to pick up skips."

"You can always take the Explorer when you go to pick up skips."

"But the Explorer will be turned back into a fleet car."

"I was thinking of keeping it for you. Then you will have one for skips and one for personal use."

"How can we afford all this?"

"I earn a good salary", said Ranger. "Besides, the Explorer will be for business and will be covered by the business. The other vehicle will be for your personal use and we will personally cover the lease."

I blew out a breath. "It makes more sense for the Explorer to be turned back into a fleet car and, when I pick up skips, for me to borrow a fleet car."

"We'll figure it out."

"I'm not driving a minivan."

Ranger smiled. "Don't worry. I won't make you drive a mommy-van", he said. He pulled up in front of the medical center. "I'll just find some parking, and I'll be there in a few minutes", he said. "The police station parking lot at three blocks away is probably the closest I will get."

"Okay", I said. "There's a bench in front of the center. I'll sit there." I got out of the car and wandered over to the bench, and sat down as Ranger pulled away to search for parking.

About three minutes later, the director from the funeral home sat down beside me. "You!" he said.

"Hello. How are you?"

"You got me arrested."

"I don't understand. I was just sitting here."

The man looked at me. His anger turned his face purple, and I worried about him having a heart attack. "You told the police about the drugs in the punch. They said that they had a sample that they got yesterday, and they could prove that the juice had bath salts in it."

"And it did, didn't it?"

"Yes, but if I had known that the police were coming I wouldn't have put drugs in the punch yesterday."

"After my grandmother was drugged and hospitalized for a few hours, the police were looking for you. It had nothing to do with me and everything to do with you."

"You and Jennifer were the two people who were behind my arrest. The funeral home owner and I have been distributing the drugs during the viewings. While I was in jail, the funeral home director was offing Jennifer. He was making her overdose on drugs. We thought it was a fitting end to her."

"Is she already drugged?" I said.

"That should be happening right now."

"Okay. So what do you want with me?"

"You're going to die from a drug overdose as well."

"How did you find me?"

"I was released on bail and, when I was walking out of the station, I saw you. It was serendipitous. I saw your picture, you know. The one that was taken after you blew up the funeral home. You face was flushed and you didn't have any eyebrows – or lashes or bangs, for that matter."

"It's true. The curls were a little crispy after that explosion. However, I have since regained my hair."

"You look much better now. That picture that they posted in the paper wasn't very flattering."

Didn't I know it? That had happened a couple of years before, and people still liked to mention it to me. It was terrible. It was like being remembered for your DMV or your passport picture. A shudder went through me.

He stood up, grabbed my arm and yanked me to my feet. "You're coming with me."

"I don't think so. I have a doctor's appointment in a few minutes, and I don't want to be late."

"No, you're coming with me."

I saw Ranger striding over to the medical center. He was still two blocks away and, as he saw me talking to someone, he broke into a jog. I hit the panic button on my watch, knowing that by doing so Ranger would be alerted and that jog would become a run.

The funeral home director tugged my arm again. Using his strength as he pulled me, I put my shoulder into him and overbalanced him. He fell on the ground and I fell on top of him. I wished I had my cuffs out already, but I wrestled him into submission. He punched me in the stomach as I rolled around on the ground with him, both of us trying to get control of the fight, and I may or may not have used my signature move on him and nailed him as I wrestled with him. It seemed to work. By the time Ranger got to me, the director was curled into a fetal position, lying on the ground, his face red and his eyes watering. "Signature move?" said Ranger as he watched the man while I dug in my purse for a set of cuffs.

"Damn straight", I said. "Mixed with a little of your aikido moves as well."

Ranger smiled.

I triumphantly pulled out a set of cuffs from my purse and restrained the man, and as I did Ranger called into the control room to tell them that I was safe.

"I'm getting cold down here", said the director. I looked. He was lying in a puddle of slush. I looked down at myself. I had slush down my yoga pants, which explained why I was a cold as I was. The man moved to struggle to his feet, and Ranger put his foot on the director's chest and pushed him down into the slush again.

"Too bad", said Ranger. "The police will be here soon to take you somewhere warm."

I started to shake from the cold, and Ranger moved behind me and gathered me in his arms. "Did he kick your stomach when you were rolling around on the ground?" he said quietly.

I nodded forlornly. "He did, but since he wanted to abduct me so that he could give me a drug overdose, I didn't think that was really relevant."

"We'll check it out", he said.

"The director said the funeral home owner was giving Jennifer Harris a drug overdose as we speak."

"I'll phone Morelli." Ranger pulled out his phone and called Joe, and explained to him what was going on. Joe said that he'd be there in just a few minutes, just after he sent a unit out to Jennifer's house. Five minutes later, Joe showed up, getting there just after the uniforms. One of the uniforms was putting the director in the squad car. The other was taking our statement.

When Joe came jogging up, Ranger said, "we have given enough of a statement that the funeral home director can be charged. You can get further statements if you swing by our place this afternoon. Steph has a doctor's appointment in a couple of minutes, and we don't want to be late."

"I'll walk with you and you can tell me what happened", said Joe. He gave quick instructions to the arresting officers, and turned to escort us into the doctor's office.

I told Joe what the funeral home director said about Jennifer. I told him the plans that the funeral home director had for me. "I think the plans were somewhat done on the fly. He created the plan because he saw me rather than because it was a premeditated plan."

"Doesn't matter whether it was premeditated or not", said Joe. "What matters is that he was intending to kill you. I'll charge him. When you were rolling around on the ground with him, did he tag you?"

"Yes, he did. He gave a good wallop to my abdomen. What happened with the search warrant last night?"

"We found cremated ashes at Joss's and Otis's apartment that we are currently analyzing. They were sectioning the ashes out into baggies for distribution. We also have someone in Vice who was able to obtain a baggie of ashes from a dealer, and we were able to trace the ashes back to Joss and Otis that way. It's a slam-dunk on them." We took the elevator up to the second floor and walked down to the doctor's office. Ranger led the way into the office and over to the receptionist. As Ranger checked me in, Joe said, "take care of yourself. I'll be by your place this afternoon to get an official statement. At that time, I should have a good feel as to what has happened with Jennifer."

"Thanks, Joe", I said. I gave him a hug and a kiss before Joe turned to Ranger and shook his hand. He turned around and left the office as Ranger guided me over to a chair to the side of the room.

The waiting room was full. I was surprised that the doctor was so backed up. It was only ten o'clock and from what I could see he was about seven people behind. My pants were wet and cold, my jacket was wet through, my stomach hurt and I was miserable. I let out a shiver and, as another pregnant woman came into the waiting room, Ranger stood to give her somewhere to sit. He noticed me shivering, however, and took off his jacket, helped me remove mine, and placed his over my shoulders. I threaded my arms through his sleeves and sniffed the comforting scent of his body wash clinging to his jacket. As I tried not to cry, I let the scent soothe me and I breathed his essence in deeply.

The doctor came flying into the office, and after he arrived things happened somewhat quickly. Half an hour later, I was sitting in an examining room. I had been weighed and my blood pressure had been taken. I was still cold, so I was sitting on Ranger's knee and he was cuddling me tightly. "I'm getting your pants wet", I said.

Ranger kissed the top of my head. "They'll dry."

I started to cry.

"Babe?"

"My stomach hurts."

"I was a bit of a distance away", he said, "but it looked to me as though he got a good punch to your abdomen."

"He did. That was when I sacked him. I was trying to be nice to him, but after he punched my abdomen I got mad."

"I'm glad you sacked him. It meant that you could capture him, and I really didn't want to let him get away."

"I really don't want to lose this baby."

"I don't either. Not only will the baby potentially be affected, but you personally could be affected as well."

"I'm scared, Ranger."

"You have to remember that you are in the right spot." He smoothed my hair out of my face. "You also have to remember that you are doing everything in your power to protect this baby and keep this baby, and that today wasn't your fault. Everything will work out the way it was meant to be."

"I won't be happy if it is meant for us to lose the baby."

Ranger thought about smiling, but he still looked worried.

The doctor came in and reviewed my history and listened to my concerns about the bleeding I'd had on the weekend and the stomach punch I'd had an hour before. He gave me a gown and told me to take my pants off so that he could look, and he left the room.

I hurriedly took off my boots, socks, pants and underwear. My panties were wet with blood again, and as I lay down on the bed and Ranger stood beside me, I held his hand firmly. Tears of terror came to my eyes, and he swiped them away with his thumb. "If we lose the baby", he said softly, "it will mean that he or she wasn't strong enough to withstand life."

"It will all be my fault."

"None of this was your fault", he said. "You didn't ask to be punched in the stomach. You are, however, doing what you can to protect our baby and yourself. You have to hang onto that, babe."

I blew out an unhappy breath and, as the doctor came in again and asked me to put my feet in the stirrups, I held Ranger's hand to my face.

The doctor looked, told me that I could lie flat again, and said, "the good news is that the cervix isn't dilating the same as it might be if you were miscarrying. However, the trauma to your abdomen just happened. I'd like you to go for an ultrasound to see how the fetus is doing, and then have you come back here for me to review the results with you. At that point, when we see what is happening, we can decide what the next steps are." He turned to Ranger. "Please walk next to Stephanie so that, if she collapses, you are able to catch her. With this blood loss mixed with the pregnancy mixed with her inability to keep food down most of the day mixed with the shock from what happened, I imagine that Stephanie will feel more lightheaded than she normally is. For the next twenty-four hours at least, I don't want her walking anywhere unescorted. Fainting would be natural under the circumstances."

"Okay", said Ranger. "I can do that."

I looked at Ranger and smiled. I didn't want to tell the doctor, but I wasn't shocked from what happened. That sort of assault happened to me far more frequently than I was comfortable with.

Ranger and I took the form to the imaging department, and an hour later we were back in the doctor's office. We had to wait another hour, but at least this time the doctor had caught up enough that there was room for Ranger to sit beside me. I was still wet and cold and miserable. The pain in my stomach had receded to a dull ache that I only really felt when I moved. Unfortunately, every time I breathed I moved.

Ranger got a call a few minutes after we sat down in the doctor's waiting room the second time. "Talk", he said as he answered. He listened without saying anything for a couple of minutes, then said, "Stephanie is bleeding. We have done an ultrasound and are now waiting to see the doctor again to find out how the baby is doing. We'll call you when we are back at the office and can do an official statement." His eyes glanced up at me as he listened for a few seconds. "She's scared", he said. He listened a few seconds more. "I'll let her know. We'll see you in a few." He got off the phone. "That was Morelli. He wanted to know how you were doing. Based on the bleeding, he is planning on charging the director with assault and battery in addition to his other charges. Jennifer was in her house and had overdosed. She is currently in the hospital being treated. The talk you had with the director likely saved Jennifer's life."

"There's always something good in everything?"

Ranger put his arm around me and pulled me in for a hug. He kissed my temple. "You're going to be fine."

"You have decreed it?" I smiled sadly, tears in my eyes.

"Don't you think so?"

"I don't know. I don't have a lot of happy in me right now. I'm finding it hard to be optimistic."

"Babe."

The nurse led us into the doctor's office, and Ranger and I sat in front of his desk. He came in a few minutes later. "Let's see this ultrasound", he said. He reviewed it, and then turned the screen around so that we could see it. "That's your baby. He or she is now about an inch long. As you can see, his or her heartbeat is nice and strong, and that's a good sign. The arms and legs are forming. The baby has just turned from an embryo to a fetus. From what we can see, your baby is thriving in there."

"Can you tell whether the baby will be a boy or a girl?" I asked. I was fascinated by the image on the screen. I didn't know how the doctor could see anything in that pulsing blob. To me, it looked like a peanut.

"No. In fact, the sex organs are just starting to form now. The sex of the baby won't be visible until about the eighteenth week. We'll do another ultrasound at that time to determine the sex and to make sure the fetus is growing properly. Are you still bleeding?"

"Yes. I was when I checked about an hour ago."

"I'd like you to come back for another ultrasound in a week", he said as he wrote out the requisition. "In the meantime, I want you to rest, lying down, for at least twenty hours a day for the next week. If you have cramping or there is a foul discharge or the bleeding increases, come into the hospital. If not, I want you to rest and remain as stress-free as you can, and I want you to stop worrying. From everything I can see, there is every reason to believe that this fetus will be viable. I fully believe that you will have a healthy baby in another six or so months. The restrictions I am recommending are precautions and precautions only, more in reflection that you have been through an ordeal than anything else."

"We can do that", said Ranger.

"Get the ultrasound next Sunday and I'll see you Monday. We shouldn't be so backed up next week. I was on call at the hospital and we had an emergency C-section come in through the ER. I'm not on call next week." He stood and shook Ranger's and my hands, and he led us out of his office.

Ranger made another appointment, captured my hand, and walked with me out of the office. As we waited for the elevator, I swiped a tear from my face. "Babe", said Ranger as he turned me into his arms. "Don't cry. The doctor said that the baby was fine and he thought it would continue to be fine. Our baby is a fighter."

"But I have to remain still for another week!" I sniffled and wiped away another tear. "Shit."

Ranger handed me a tissue. "Babe."

_The End_

_Thanks for reading my story. I will start posting Tamper 32 tonight..._


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